Spin Doctors
by samiapple
Summary: Sometimes she forgets that he was a monster before she ruined him.— In which, Bonnie and Kai's face off in the wedding hall goes a bit differently, and Bonnie decides to give Kai that second chance, for all their sakes…— multichap fic rated M for dub-con, depictions of BDSM, graphic sex and violence, and other disturbing themes. (Bonkai, unrequited Bamon)
1. The Departed

**The Departed**

* * *

She's always hated the smell of blood.

That metallic, potent odor that helmed viscid death and heartache had never appealed to her. Not like it did to most of her undead friends anyways.

Even still, despite how execrable the smell is, she thinks that she should have gotten used to it by now. It seemed as though she had not lived through a single day where blood hadn't tainted it, not since the Salvatores arrived in Mystic Falls her junior year.

It's that familiar scent that causes her nose to scrunch slightly as she enters the wedding hall. There's nearly hundreds of cracked and crumpled bodies that lay strewn across the floor dusted with glass shatters and coated in ropes of the dark slippery liquid that is oh so pivotal to existence.

She's not surprised when she sees the bodies, or when she has her senses assaulted by the dank irony smell saturating the distilled air. When Matt had first showed her _his_ recording, she had felt a blanket of dread settle itself over her like leadened film. It was so heavy that it had bound her to the worn leather of the couch, trapping her in place so all she could do was watch black, soulless eyes and curving lips underneath the crackling film static.

She knew then, that he would do something like this. Not just from the lifelessness that dulled the gray of his eyes, but maybe also from the crooked smile that never seemed to leave his face. He had promised the Gemini coven an excruciating death for two decades after all. That type of mindset didn't just disappear.

_I guess what I'm trying to say is, your betrayal really hurt me, Bon._

She knows that in reality, it wasn't the Gemini's fault. Not really. The Gemini's weren't the reason he had snapped and decided to storm the wedding hall with a grand explosion.

_So, this is kind of all your fault. _

It was that sentence, that low, lazy drawl of his that crawled through her skin and kept the fine hairs on the back of her neck raised well after she had gotten in the car to head to the wedding venue.

_So, this is kind of all your fault._

On the surface level, behind the most basic of rationales, she knew that he was saying this because she had left him bleeding and bruised on the snow-ladened ground of the 1903 prison world. He was getting his revenge on _her_ revenge and ultimately wanted to make her suffer in "new and inspired ways.'' It was as simple as that.

But things were never simple with Kai Parker.

Which is why she couldn't ignore the incessant prickling in the very back of her mind. It came from those shadowed recesses, the ones that she rarely visits because it's typically filled with cold doubt and harsh self-deprecation. It was that dark and fragile place in her mind that told her that revenge wasn't his only incentive.

_Your betrayal really hurt me, Bon. _

She rubbed the scarring tissue on her right wrist and scratched at the lingering sticky film the duck tape had left.

She hurt him. _She _hurt _him. _

It's such a foreign concept to her, trying to grasp at a potential underlying meaning behind the glaring obviousness. Especially one that she has such an unbending bias against.

She hurt him because she left him in 1903. It was her fault, and yet it wasn't because she just _knew_ he would revert back to this _crazed_ version of himself, and she had been right.

What he had done to Elena—she swallowed the thought down before it could latch itself further into her forethoughts.

This wasn't something she could afford to think about.

She couldn't, not when in a few minutes, she'd be facing him. She refused to crumple in on herself deliberating about her best friend, and incidentally make herself emotionally vulnerable before preparing for a fight like this.

Kai liked to fight physically, but he also liked to mentally exhaust and manipulate his opponents, and she couldn't afford anymore distractions.

Right now, she just needed to focus on ridding the ceaseless prickling in her head, because it was starting to act more and more like an itch she just couldn't scratch.

Ultimately, she knew, this uneasy feeling may have been purvey to intuition, or nerves, or maybe her body was trying to tell her that she was just so completely scared out of her mind, that her consciousness refused to pick up on it.

But there was the off chance that this inkling meant that she wasn't looking hard enough, wasn't _thinking_ hard enough about the tape he had left her, or about their time in 1994 and 1903. That she hadn't paid enough attention to that look of desperation that had been etched onto every single detail of his face as she prepared to plunge her knife into his heart. It meant that there was some missing puzzle piece of potentiality that could end up tipping the scales in her _favor_, to the avoidance of further bloodshed. It meant that there was something more that she wasn't seeing, something that was just on the tip of her tongue.

Or on the tip of _his_ tongue.

_So this is kind of all your—_

"—Bonnie?" It's Matt cutting through the frantic thoughts being tugged from the deep recesses of her mind. He's looking at her with concern awashed in crystalline eyes and worry lines around thin lips.

When she does nothing but stare numbly at the blocks of yellow paint diminishing on the dark road just beyond the windshield, he speaks up again, this time more determined.

"Listen, Bon. It's not too late. You can still leave town before Damon finds you. I don't have to drop you off at the wedding. You can leave all of this."

She can clearly hear Matt putting on an air of composure to counter the thinly veiled apprehension fogging the car, so she pretends that she doesn't hear the way his words slightly lilt with an edge of panic.

She also pretends not to notice how he's just as terrified for her as she feels.

But Damon isn't who she should be worrying about.

Instead, she clears her throat and unglues her eyes from the windshield to stare resolutely at familiar baby blues, and says what she always says when she's about to thrust herself into a life-threatening situation for the sake of her friends.

"I'll be fine, Matt. I promise."

.

.

Bonnie was never really one for talking.

She tended to do a lot of thinking in her head. She was usually the wallflower of her friend group, the one who didn't _need_ to talk a lot because she could always count on other people to do the talking for her. Instead, she liked to _think_ because it made her feel prepared and controlled.

The talking was usually done by the people who liked hearing themselves, the ones who thought aloud, and who needed validation from others.

She was not one of those people.

She preferred to sit in the background, assess her situation and _think_ about the next possible form of action before observing more and consequently modifying her angle.

Kai Parker was the exact opposite.

He fell directly into the category of people who _loved_ the sound of their own voice.

Which is why she doesn't even _need_ to know where the wedding hall is because she can _hear_ him deliberating to himself as she carefully pads through the barren and blood-stained hallway.

The first thing she notices as she walks into the room, besides the crystalline chandelier that is quite literally on the floor in the doorway, is the ghastly wound resting just above his clavicle.

She can see the bright red blood oozing from chunks of mangled flesh. The crimson secretion grossly contrasts the milky skin of his neck, drenching the entirety of it.

She can recognize a werewolf bite when she sees one.

She thinks she says something to him regarding the bite, as if she just can't help herself from commenting on it.

Just like how she can't help the surge of satisfaction that tingles through to her fingertips at the sight of his wounded body.

Despite the urgency of the situation, she's in a dream state, her head is hazy and calm as if her own mind is subconsciously protecting her from knowing that she's walking through a field of death, or perhaps walking towards her own.

Even when he laughs in response, in a loud, acrid and bitter tone, instead of processing it fully, it just echoes softly through her head without touching her.

She flinches though, when that sardonic bark of laughter abruptly cuts off, the sudden silence harshly yanking her back to reality.

Because the reality _is_ is that he wants her to suffer, and that one of them is dying tonight whether she likes it or not.

She realizes brazenly, as her mind catches up with itself, that there is no need for digging deeper, or scrutinizing all their past interactions like she had been trying to do in the car ride over.

There's something different about him.

It's off and more unsettling in the way it shifts the air around him.

She supposes she could attribute it to the fact that he's now also a vampire, but she knows that that's not all it is.

There's nothing even remotely salvageable about this.

Not when he's looking at her with eyes so dead, she can feel a chill deep in her bones.

In that moment, an unbidden image flashes through her. There's cerulean eyes, hopeful and colorful, illuminated by flurries of white snow. She dismisses the image before it can sink itself further into her, and instead focuses her attention on the calculated glinting of grayed pupils.

Before she can tense her shoulders to prepare herself against the impending onslaught, he veers sideways and goes off on a patronizing spiel instead.

"Do your friends think you're funny?"

He doesn't give her a chance to retort and she thinks that it's for the best.

She's become too aware of the sudden paranoia seeping through her to dignify him with a response.

She can't wrap her head around why he's still prolonging the inevitable when those soulless eyes of his have been telling her he's wanted the exact opposite from the moment she stepped into the wedding hall.

"Because maybe," he adjusts the collar of his shirt, and she watches guardedly as more blood seeps from the neck wound and underneath his fingernails, "if you were funny, if you were the one with the good jokes who they could always count on to make them laugh, maybe they'd be cool with letting you live instead of Elena."

She pretends that his comment doesn't cause a slight pang of hurt to bleed into the expanse of the dread she's feeling, but rather purses her lips into a sententious smile, because she knows that seeing her crack is what he wants most, and she won't give him the satisfaction.

After tonight, she's counting on never having to deal with him trying to worm his way under her skin ever again.

This is the thought that splurges her forwards.

She slowly stalks closer, worn boots carefully stepping around the dead bodies and glass fragments.

"You're right. Sadistic humor's your thing. I'm just the one that does magic."

Before realizing that he had a werewolf bite percolating and poisoning his body, she hadn't been so sure about the outcome of this night. She now credits her uncertainty as to why she had been desperately excogitating their shared past and his possible alternative motives on the car ride over.

Even so, he was an all-powerful coven leader, and she was simply a witch who had (foolishly) dappled in Expression magic. But now, she can see the instability in his eyes, and the way he leans slightly onto one foot. She's willing to bet that if he walked towards her, his gait would hold a staggering limp.

He's been physically weakened, and he's slowly going insane. He may snap again, but he'll be unorganized, and sloppy in his attack while his own darkness consumes him.

But even though she can see him slowly spiraling, he still wants her dead.

And she wants him dead—which means, it's now or never.

And besides, she's tired of talking.

The saccharine tilt of her lips immediately slips from her face as her hand raises. She can feel her tendrils of bright magic seeking the only other form of life in the room as she sends an aneurysm coursing in that direction.

"Undo the spell, Kai!"

She watches; her emerald eyes narrow, directing all her focus and strength into her magic, and only losenning her grip slightly as large hands begrudgingly press onto blood-stained temples.

"I can't," he grits out at her, "my death made it permanent."

She almost falters when she sees his eyes flash with something other than dull black. Instead, she hastily tightens her grip and sends another powerful flood of magic towards him.

She can feel each and every one of the bones in his kneecaps cracking and giving under the pressure of her magic.

She lets out a small breath as he finally drops to the ground like a cement building wavering then abruptly crumbling in the midst of a hurricane.

He cackles.

And she sucks that small breath right back in.

She pauses, that uneasy feeling of dread and paranoia threatening to sink back into her even harder than before, but she reminds herself that despite his mocking bravado, he's still thoroughly battered on the floor by _her_ hand.

That, and there's only a matter of time before his gruesome wound becomes more than happy to do the rest of her dirty work for her.

"Fine," her voice cracks slightly, but that's besides the point, "I'll just wait for the werewolf bite to kill you."

The unsettling air percolating through the room is making it impossible to think of anything but a calm before the storm.

She tries not to flinch as he languidly pops his jaw in response, and chooses to ignore the way the derisive grin doesn't leave his face. Her gaze instead flickers to the dark red that's been steadily trickling from his neck onto the lapel of his jacket.

"You know what's funny?"

She thinks that he may be trying to smirk at her, but it comes out as more of a grimace.

"I didn't even know werewolves were real until I got bit by one."

There's something distinctly off putting in the way his voice has remained airy and offhand while on the brink of death.

Despite logic telling her that she is winning this fight, that unsettling air still hasn't left, so she decides to take precaution and notices the overturned table just to the left of her.

He's long since rolled over with his back turned from her, so when she goes carefully to break off the leg of the table, she doesn't notice the faint murmuring of Latin floating from under his breath.

This time, when she treads closer, she's more than ready to bury the wooden stake into his bloody flesh and finally finish what she started back in 1903.

But he speaks again, in that same _airy_ tone before she even gets the chance.

"The thing is, Bon. The only way a guy turns into a wolf, is if it's magic, right? So technically, their venom's magic too."

There's a pause in his haggering breathing, and already she can feel foreign coils of bright magic rising like heat from the same trickling path of blood on the lapel she had been tracing with her gaze earlier.

"So I just went ahead and siphoned it up."

She freezes at his words, and it's like every single nerve ending webbed in her brain is screaming at her to run as that steady steam of magic grows bigger and then melds into something darker.

But she can't run, she's paralyzed.

She feels paralyzed because she knows, more surely than anything, that it'd be no use, not when she watches as he stands up on legs that should be broken and runs his bloody fingers over a bite that is no longer there.

She's not sure if she drops the stake in her hand from pure shock, or if his magic makes her do it.

She doesn't try to run as he raises a ringed hand and feels his synthesized but growing aura of magic latch onto her throat.

She's suffocating, and her body levitates. She feels as though she's being hung from the ceiling by her throat as it tightens more and more, but she doesn't scream or frantically kick her legs. Instead, she watches villainous eyes bore into her, straight through her soul.

There's only one thought floating through the panic fogging up her mind.

This isn't the Kai she knows.

He's not the one she left in 1903, but he's not the Kai from '94 either.

The man standing before her is different, _worse_ somehow.

His eyes don't carry that cold, unfeeling, apathetic rigidness she'd gotten so used to while trapped in his prison world, or that sickeningly overwhelming swirl of emotion that he'd bared to her in 1903.

He's more like a dark abyss of nothingness, the eyes staring back at her contain nothing but a painfully dull listlessness, his face blank.

She realizes now that his eyes aren't boring into her. He's not even looking at her, he's looking _past_ her. It's like he's detached himself, he's let go of her. Like there's no shared history between them, no shared _anything_.

His expression shows that he is _only_ concentrating on curling his magic tighter around her.

She has a brief trembling thought that he may have turned his humanity off, but dismisses it because she can very clearly feel a very real and jarring _anger_ emanating from his aura that makes the little air that's trickling into her lungs burn.

A sort of jolted revelation bursts through her previous panic as she comes to the certain realization that he may hate her more than she hates him.

But that's when it clicks, the last piece of the puzzle she had been slaving over before Matt had abruptly tugged her from her thoughts in the front seat of his truck.

That's when her revelation turns into something more on its own accord, into something appalled. Her panic turns to dread. The missing puzzle piece in of itself doesn't fit itself into its correct place all at once, it slowly seeps in, and even then it doesn't quite fit the way she wants it to.

That prickling sensation crawls back up her skull, much stronger this time, as if just understanding the urgency of her situation.

And she can see it now, the puzzle piece in all its glory.

It comes to fruition in the form of that unbidden image from before: beautiful blue-gray eyes flooded, drowning in a sea of aching emotion, illuminated by snowflakes petaling through the air.

It's the puzzle piece that explains it. It explains the detachment. The suffocating aura of anger smothering the room. The video. His hurt. 1903.

Or at least it tries to. And that's enough.

Because now she knows that it wasn't hate that she'd felt pouring off his aura in waves.

It was _resentment_.

The brooding dread spreads over her gradually as the puzzle piece finally clicks succinctly into place.

She doesn't wait for the dread to settle.

"Wait...wait."

She's surprised that she can even get her weak voice to croak over his tight hold around her throat. Her neck muscles gallantly stretch and gasp around the cord of magic pushing her trachea into itself.

She isn't shocked when he doesn't release his hold on her, but almost gasps in sheer surprise when she can feel his tendrils of magic slightly lessen their burning grip.

"I know why...you're doing this."

Her eyes are still locked on his, and she refuses to look away, not even when he lets out a cruel, disbelieving puff of laughter through perfectly straight teeth.

She tries not to gasp again as her body is suddenly yanked closer to him, she's still suspended in the air and her feet barely graze against the floor littered with cracked glass and blood.

"Uh, yeah... I kind of told you why I was doing this in the tape recording I left you, remember? Does, _I want you to suffer in new and inspired ways, _ring any bells?"

He's mocking her. She can tell by the slight smirk that's quirked up the corner of his mouth, the way one of his eyes brows is raised and his head tilts slightly to the side; in the way the once dull gray of his eyes now sparkle.

But she swallows her pride and her need to viciously bite back at him, and instead focuses on the fact that she is able to swallow in the first place, and that her body has been lowered to the ground.

She can't help but think that he's only spared her life thus far so he can have one last fleeting satisfaction of taunting her to her face.

But his grasp isn't as heavy as before, it feels more like a phantom hand holding her from stepping closer to him, rather than the white hot grip of his magic that had been squeezing the air from her lungs just a few moments before.

The tell-tale waves of angry magic that's still spilling off of him despite his construed mask of mockery is what strengthens her conviction to continue.

"No."

She ignores the way his eyebrows raise all the way up to his hairline at the surprising amount of steel in her voice.

She swallows again, to prevent her voice from cracking as she gets the next words of out, less aggressive this time.

"That isn't why you're doing this. And you know it. We _both_ do."

Kai blinks once, as if surprised that Bonnie would even dare to challenge his remark when he was so viciously holding her suspended between life and death just moments ago.

And she supposes she should be more desperate and less demanding, should be fighting more for her life, trying to manipulate or plead with him in any way possible to keep herself alive.

But right now, she just wants _answers_. The pleading can come when she knows she's failed.

"Wow. Um, please enlighten me then, Bonster, because I would really, _truly_ love to know what other reasons you have for my linking your life to your best friend."

She takes a deep breath then. Her eyes briefly waver shut—that puzzle-piece image of gray eyes in snow burn behind her eyelids—before snapping them open to look him squarely in the face.

She just needed a reaction, _anything_ to prove that she was right. And then she could use this to her potential advantage. One that was yet to be bestowed on her.

She hadn't even really been paying attention to his earlier inquiry, but she gets the gist of it. She's too busy readying herself in pushing out the most onerous tasting words she'd ever say to someone like him.

"You like me."

She feels like an absolute idiot saying it out loud.

The words somehow fall flat despite her strong and sure tone, and there's an awful silence that's fallen over the room.

But the mocking smile is immediately dropped from his face at her words. And for a second, she thinks she has him.

But then his eyes sparkle again, a wide dimpled grin cracks through his faux seriousness, as if he can't even _try_ to pretend to take her seriously, and she feels a sinking feeling drop low in her stomach.

And then when he laughs again, it's a hearty laugh. He practically doubles over into himself, and she's pretty sure she can see tears spring from the corner of his eyes.

Her cheeks heat up despite herself and she has to keep the burning embarrassment and loathing threatening to crawl up her throat at bay.

She doesn't think she's hated anyone more.

She barely has time to register that he's released his magical hold on her before he suddenly straightens up and settles a disgustingly patronizing look onto her.

"That—that got me, Bon. For the record, I don't have some sort of school girl crush on you. But I truly am flattered you know, that you'd think I'd go through all this trouble because I "like" you."

Her green eyes narrow when he moves his blood-stained fingers to form quotation marks towards the end of his sentence. The amusement is clear in his features, and it's a look she's seen many times before; should be used to even, but she's not.

Not when it's her life and her friends' lives at stake.

Except what he's saying makes perfect sense, it's more than logical. Why would _anyone_ go through this sort of trouble, other than for revenge.

But she knows better than anyone that this type of thing—_feelings_ aren't logical.

And she's not yet ready to let go of the puzzle piece; the raw, bleeding emotion she saw in 1903, of what she saw on the video recording, and of what she's seeing now.

Somewhere in that twisted little heart of his, she hurt him. He wouldn't have lashed out this brashly if he didn't care in some capacity, for her. And she should have known better than to think that the manipulator who likes to twist situations to his will would ever allow himself to be truly vulnerable and confess to her without struggle. But she was going to keep trying if it meant she could buy everyone more time, if _nothing_ else. Because even if he never ends up admitting anything to her, the longer he stays in the wedding hall and talks to her, the less time he spends running after everyone else she cares about.

So she swallows down her embarrassment, her pride, _everything_, and continues.

"I know that you're lying, Kai."

She takes a tentative step towards him, but his eyes flash dangerously despite his amused grin, and she immediately knows that that was the wrong move. But she continues anyways, not knowing why or when her voice started sounding so hoarse.

"And I know that I..." she swallows harshly, his words from the tape recording echoing through her head as she gets the next words out "...hurt you."

She swallows again, wondering maniacally if the reason why that patronizing grin hasn't moved from his face is because he's somehow frozen it on.

"Admit it."

She has absolutely no idea of why she spits that last part out at him, there's just something about his very existence that brings forth a deep seated aggression.

"Admit it."

She says it louder this time, answering to his determined silence, because maybe she finally _has_ become desperate. That image of the missing puzzle piece has been slowly fading out of her vision, just like the possibility of her coming out of this alive.

She just needs to wait for the right time to strike; she can feel the faint beat of her magic humming just under her fingertips in anticipation. She's not strong enough to fight back yet, as she'd used too many powerful spells in breaking his bone marrow. She just needed more time to get her strength back. She doesn't know when exactly she'd become more concerned about stalling, and less about getting the answers she had desperately needed just a few moments ago.

But despite her stalling, she thinks that maybe she has finally pushed him too far this time.

So when that stupid smirk falls off his face at her repeated demand, she knows that it's for real, because now she can feel a new bout of anger simmering around him.

There's her reaction.

And she can't help but be relieved.

But her short-lived relief vanishes because the longer she stares at him, the more she can see something breaking from the inside.

It's like she's tapped into a dam. His magical aura that's been darkly tainted grows stronger—stronger and _angrier_ than it should be. His jaw clenches in an attempt to regain his self-control. His eyes refocus in a confusing array of emotions—none of which she can place—before they snap back to hers. The rest of his face settles into an irritated and dangerous scowl.

She knows then, looking at the darkened features of his face, that she should run.

It'd be her death wish to try to use any of her magic against him now.

But he's on her before she can take a step in any direction.

His body is hunched over hers and he's crushed her into the wall behind them, his cold, blood-stained fingers curl around her throat, pushing her head backwards, her neck uncomfortably angled in a way that forces her to look up at him.

Although this kind of choking hurts less, it feels more _real_ and final. But she's not even thinking about her imminent death, all she's thinking about is _how_ he got to her.

He had pinned her with a superhuman speed, one that she was all too familiar with.

She'd forgotten that he was also a Heretic.

An abomination of nature.

A vampire.

And that fact alone somehow terrifies her more than being murdered in cold blood.

"You admit it!"

He growls at her, his hot breath puffs onto her forehead. His anger is practically seeping out of his ears. And it's overwhelming the both of them.

She doesn't know why, but her brain suddenly short circuits at his demand. She can't even feel her own terror anymore. She's preparing herself for tarring veins and reddened corneas; they don't come. And he's too close to her, she can see too many details of his face, too many peels of dried blood clotting against fine stubble.

He smells like death.

Her mouth opens and closes, wanting to defend herself, insult him, _anything, _but it snaps shut instead.

There's no trace of that cool and calculated anger that's she had gotten so used to in '94, but he's no longer detached either. It's like he's been set aflame.

He's someone whose last breadth of sanity was melting apart at the seams.

And she knows it's not just because he's now a _vampire_. This was a long time coming.

She'd felt a very brief and fleeting relief at getting a reaction from him, but she couldn't ignore the very stiff and unmoving blanket of dread that had fallen over her the moment that last puzzle piece had fallen into place, the one that lead her directly to _this_.

It was because, despite her relief at being right, she _didn't_ want to be right about this. She didn't want to have to bear the responsibility of all the heartache and destruction that he'd caused because of her. Or be forced to evaluate, or question herself. So when he asks her to 'admit' to her own feelings, her mind goes blank and she suddenly can't register anything but fear at her own confused denial. She simply doesn't _know_ how to think of anything but her hatred for him and him alone

"I don't—I don't know what you're talking about."

Her voice comes out small, too small, because now he's searching her face frantically. He's trying to find something, anything that contradicts her words.

And she should have seen this coming, but she hates his desperation so much that she'd rather he just rip out chunks of her throat with his own teeth. She's become outraged at the prospect that he could possibly think that she has anything else to offer for him to use against her.

Because there's _nothing_ there but hatred, and she's sure of it.

But even still, she feels like coiling into herself.

He's supposed to be the enigma who hides things, not _her_. And he's too vicious and demanding in his search, too close to feeling like he's peeling and ripping her soul apart.

He's too close to _her_.

He suddenly stops his searching, his back straightens, putting a slightly larger sliver of distance between them, and it's like she can finally breathe again. But then his eyes finally zero in on something other than her face.

Her neck.

Rough pads of large, ringed fingers squeeze once around her throat, as if testing her pulse, no doubt able to feel and hear how hard it's hammering away just under the surface of her skin.

He'll eat her if he can't find anything.

And she's ashamed for feeling grateful for it.

"Do you know what it's like to be a human blood-bag for a bunch of previously desiccated vampires?"

His eyes are still trained dazedly on the squeezed skin of her neck underneath his fingertips, almost as though he's hypnotized.

"Taking bites from your flesh like you're an all you can eat buffet? Having to heal yourself with as much power as you can and draining your energy so much to the point where you'd only wake up to realize you're being fed on?"

He pushes out of his daze slowly as he speaks and by the end it's like he's trying not to explode at her, like he's frustratingly attempting to make a dumb child understand his use of big words.

She tries to speak then, she really does, but the words turn to sand in her mouth, because his eyes suddenly snap back up to hers with a gaze that is now pinning her _too_ sharply.

"You thought _I_ was ruthless, you can't even _imagine_ what they put me through. And they were _siphons_ at that. I always lost, no matter what. No matter how hard I tried to fight them off, screamed at them to stop, they'd never listen, I was their goddamn coven leader, but they knew I'd never be strong enough to fight them all."

"I'm sorry…"

Her voice finally pushes the words out, as if on reflex, as if out of politeness—because it's the right thing to do. It's like she can't help but feel an ache of pity for a person who suffers, even if that person was Kai Parker.

Because when it comes down to it, she's not _that_ sorry that she trapped him in a prison world again.

What she meant to say to him was, _I didn't know_.

Maybe if she had known he'd be stuck with a bunch of raging vampire-siphons, she might have thought differently about her revenge plan. It wasn't in her nature to be so cruel.

Cruelty was in _his_.

He briefly searches her eyes again, and again, she's not sure what he's looking for, but he must have found it because he lets out a short exhale of disbelief, his plump lips quirking upwards ruefully at her apology.

It's like she's so transparent that he just _knows_ that her apology was more automatic and out of courtesy and pity than real responsibility for her own brash actions.

"You thought that you knew the real reason I did all of this. That it was because I _liked_ you."

His voice curls oddly around the word "liked" as if it's something so trivial, that he's never had to utter it before. He gets back in her face then, in the way that makes her want to fold into herself. He's not holding onto that same tightened coil of emotive anger from before, but slips more into an eerily calm growl as he continues.

"You're still _wrong_, Bonnie."

A new shot of fear spikes through her at his ominous admission. Because she had been so _sure_ of his motives, but he was just too convincing in proving her otherwise.

She struggles only slightly against him then, maybe just to see how mobile she was under his firm grip on her neck, to see if she could still escape if she needed to. She barely budges against him, her knees knock slightly into his, but her head stays firmly planted against the cold wall behind her. His grip is too tight, his height too overbearing in comparison to her small frame. Her magic still hasn't completely restored itself.

She's not leaving anytime soon.

So she tries instead to dampen the tilt of hysteria threatening to cling to her next words.

"We don't have to do this, Kai. I'm sorr—"

"—It's a little late for apologies, don't you think?"

His voice is calm again, but it still cuts meanly through her meek second attempt of an apology in a way that makes a prickling of tears appear behind her eyelids. And then, when she can only watch his face while _he_ watches her, slowly, the upper side of his lip quirks upwards, as if remembering the faint outline of an old joke.

"I will say that you were right when you said you hurt me, I mean that much was obvious.

"And I guess you were also right about us not having to do this, not how I originally planned it at least. Before you decided to pull a fast one on me, I was _going_ to deliver you dying to Damon to agonize the two of you for a while, you know, make him choose between you or Elena."

There's something sparkling in his eyes as he continues, and Bonnie has to fight the bile rising up her throat.

"But Damon's not here, and you're not dying yet."

He shakes his head slightly, murmuring the last part to himself, as if in disbelief that she had managed to survive thus far.

"The thing is, Bon, I don't want it to be over so soon anymore, your suffering, I mean.

"I mean, I was stuck in 1903 for _months_, killing you now would just be mercy."

_No, no, no. _

She thinks it over and over again in her head. She wants to scream it at him at the top of her lungs, let the sentiment rip from her entire being, and have her magic implode with it. But she can't, because there's a lump lodged too deep in her throat. And she can do nothing but helplessly watch gray eyes languidly trail over her face until they settle on the top of her Cupid's bow mouth.

"I think it's time for a little change of plans, don't you think?"

His eyes travel back up to pools of drowning green, and she can tell that he really wants to make sure she's listening this time.

She is.

"First, I want you to feel the pain and suffering that I did. _All_ of it."

Her chest constricts tightly on its own volition, she can feel the first tear drop balance precariously on the edge of her eyelid. But she won't let it fall. She refuses to cry in front of him; she won't give him the satisfaction. Her chin lifts on its own accord, in the only bout of defiance she can muster.

"I want you to beg, and plead for my forgiveness, just like I did before you stabbed me in the back. And then, I'm going to drink your blood until you beg me to stop. But I won't kill you, not yet, I'll bite you until you know that there's no hope of escaping me, that you'll always be too weak to. I'll feed on you until you can't feel anything but pain and _me_. And then maybe, I'll kill the rest of your friends—you know, for good measure."

She can feel her magic roar to life almost in defense at his threatening words. Her power is warm and bright underneath her skin. It had been depleted earlier, only a dim candle in comparison to what it was now. If it hadn't come back when it did, she knew she would have had no other choice but to resort to doing something completely dangerous like using Expression.

She doesn't know why, but she stays frozen, mutely blinking up at him, the burning sensation behind her eyelids finally lessening with the knowledge that her magic is back. She'll wait for the right moment to make her escape.

She'll be damned if she doesn't go down without a fight.

His eyes bore into her, and it feels worse than the baseless searching he had been doing earlier. Her magic flares brighter.

He speaks again just as she is about to release her magic crackling through her fingertips.

"I want to _ruin_ you, just like they ruined me."

His hands move from around her neck, faster than even her own eyes can track, to harshly clutch the sides of her arms in a vice grip.

It happens too quickly. She's not prepared, and she will forever hate herself for waiting so long to use her magic against him.

It's like every cell in her body is being ripped apart as he siphons the magic from her.

A cry is torn from her throat, the precarious tear that she had sucked into herself falls freely and is followed by others. She feels so weak, that her knees buckle under her, and she can feel nothing but the fabric of worn dress pants slotting firmly against her jeans to keep her weight upwards, and a ghost of a painful sting settling through her body.

Her vision becomes darkened with spots with blurred edges, her eyelids droop with the exhaustion of keeping herself from letting the spots bleed over the entirety of her vision.

She feels a finger trail down her tear-stained cheek next. It's a feather-light touch so delicate, it's like he's touching porcelain. A faint, warm breath of air brushes against her skin like a caress, the voice soothingly shushing the miserable sobs that she realizes belatedly are coming from her.

She barely hears when he speaks to her next. The voice that slips through her ears is distant and soft. The hand that's not delicately wiping tears from her skin, comes to brush stray strands of hair from her forehead, like he's lulling her to sleep.

"We can start with the begging for my forgiveness first."

She startles then, when she feels the hand that was brushing her hair from her face roughly grip her jaw and force her lulling head to center itself.

She feels her eyes begin to water again as they settle themselves on his face, recognition pouring through her as she realizes that this isn't just some horrible dream that she'll wake up from. This is real life and it's happening to _her_.

She doesn't register the way his eyes travel back to her lips.

"I've always wondered what lengths you'd go to for your friends. You want me to spare the rest of them, don't you? I mean, you are their self-proclaimed martyr and all."

The once rugged and handsome features of his blood-speckled face become ruined with a taunting wickedness.

She's snapped herself out of her lovely dream-state now.

His comment forces a new bout of anger to surge through her. And another bout when she realizes how close he's hovering over her again. She tries to viciously move her head out of his grip through a sudden burst of energy, but she cries out as the fingers clutching her jaw clamp right back onto her throat, cool metal bands digging themselves into the already tender and bruised skin.

And then they're right back to square one.

Except this time, she can't stand on her own.

His knees are still locked against hers, keeping her pressed and upright against the wall behind them. The hand gripping her neck keeps her back from slouching and her head from lulling. Their chests graze slightly.

And he must know that he's torturing her with his closeness, that of all the things he could've done to her, that _this—_each brush of his sternum against the bare skin above her v-neck top, each involuntary squeeze of his long, undead fingers against the live pulse of her neck—is what makes her stomach twist and coil in the worst possible way. It's worse than any torture or pain. Because _this_ is what makes her feel trapped and inherently _violated_. It's like he's trying to brand and dig his vile touch into her skin, and keep it there.

She watches his Adam's apple bob against strong neck veins splattered in a layer of dried blood, and a sliver of a pink tongue dips outwards to lick the underside of his upper lip. His eyes sparkle again.

He's enjoying this.

He's enjoying watching her practically lose her mind, and not being able to do a single thing about it.

She bites her own lip to prevent herself from screeching at him.

"So tell me, Bonnie, what exactly would you do to gain my forgiveness...

...To save your precious friends from me?"

His voice is still slippery and low, stroking its way through her ear canals, like he's trying to dress up his threat in dripping sweetener.

His intense gaze flickers distractedly to the lower lip that she's plucked between her teeth, except he pauses, and lingers there. And when his eyes darken considerably, and she knows then, that he's lost himself.

The small steady fan of his warm breath against the skin of her cheek falters just for a second.

But it's enough.

The realization smacks into her so harshly that it's like all the air in the world is being wrenched from her lungs completely.

It's in his eyes, his stilted breath, his gaze, his _closeness_.

He's hungry.

But not for her blood.

She hadn't prepared for _this_. This wasn't on the tape or 1903. She'd thought that he was just doing this to torture her; the closeness, the intense stares. His feelings for her were supposed to be mild, bridled, simplistic and hallowed. She hadn't known, hadn't registered the possibility—

"—Would you beg, Bonnie?"

His voice comes out as a hoarse whisper then, and now Bonnie doesn't miss the way it slightly bends along something that almost sounds like a groan. And the way he says her name, in that deep tone, like something delicious is wetting and swirling around his tongue, causes a nervous tremor to ripple through her. The sinful implication of his words travel straight down to her stomach and the warmth lingers somewhere lower than she had meant it to.

They both know that he wants her to beg for an entirely new reason.

He's no longer talking about his forgiveness.

His eyelids lower, his dark gaze is laser focused as he raises a ringed finger to gently brush against the skin of her lower lip. And she's so terrified by her revelation that he may actually _want_ her, that she suddenly gets a perverse image of him delving that same finger deep into the warm cavity of her mouth.

She watches in slight horror as his pupils begin to bleed through the gray of his irises, as if knowing exactly what she didn't mean to think about. Heat blossoms on her cheeks despite the disgust and shame crawling through her at her uncontrived thought. Except now the only thing she can focus on is the way their chests brush slightly against each other with each rise and fall.

She can no longer separate between the air she's breathing and his.

They're so close now that they're practically breathing in the carbon dioxide leaving each other's lips.

She feels his breath spread over her face, grazing against the curve of her lips, his fingers dip and stroke themselves a trail of fire across her cheek bones, the smell of death and blood looms around them. The little magic she has left cackles beneath her skin and her veins throb with each frantic pump of blood to her hammering heart.

_...until all you can feel is pain and __**me**_

He's assaulted each and every one of her senses.

She can almost see the fragile air that's barely dividing the space between their lips tremor slightly.

He's too _close_ to her again.

And her brain short circuits for a second time.

Her eyelids flutter shut on their own accord.

Maybe to make him finally disappear.

Maybe to give him permission...

At first there's nothing, just absolute darkness and the sound and feel of their warm breaths intermingling.

She holds hers, sucks her breath deep into her lungs, and it's like time freezes.

She feels his lower lip just barely brush against the underside of her upper lip and something white-hot rips through her body so violently that she has to bite back a gasp.

She doesn't even register the sound of footsteps falling determinedly in the distance.

"Well, look who finally decided to show up."

Her blood pumps so viciously and loudly that she can barely even hear the muddled affirmation that another body has joined them.

Her eyes open slowly and with no urgency. She dazedly stares at Kai, briefly wondering why his attention is no longer on her.

Her eyes graze over the profile of his face, tracing the sharpness of a jawline that she'd never noticed before, as she follows his line of sight.

He's looking at Damon.

Damon is stood in the doorway, the lines of his forehead are creased, impossibly bright blue eyes are staring determinately at her, scaling her face, no doubt looking for any signs of harm.

His confirmed presence promptly shakes herself out of the spell Kai must have put her under, and she can't help the surge of gratefulness and familiarity she feels at his presence. The breath that had been coiled within her is finally exhaled in relief.

She opens her mouth to speak to him, if only to say his name, but Kai beats her to it.

"I must say, I wasn't sure you were gonna show up at all given that for all you knew, I could've been doing your dirty work for you. But I guess I did get a bit sidetracked—"

His voice is back to that careless lilt. The low timbre no longer seeps into her skin and makes her think about things she shouldn't. It's still silky and smooth, but in a different way. He was _different_ with her.

"Let her go, Kai."

It's the first time she's heard Damon speak, the first time she'd seen him all day. And she can't help but feel a sense of pride at the way Damon is unwavering when it comes to protecting her, but even still, an uneasiness falls upon her again. She doesn't know exactly _how_ hard he'll fight for her. He must know what Kai did to Elena.

"Hmm, tempting argument, Damon, but uh, I don't think so."

Contradictrally, Kai releases Bonnie, and it's so sudden, that the gasp she had been holding earlier spills from her lips and her knees crumple below her. She hadn't realized how weak she still was from his siphoning. Her vision begins to blur completely, and her back slides down the wall behind her. She thinks she sees Damon charge towards her out of the corner of her eye, but something's stopped him.

She fights through her body's need to throw itself out of consciousness, and finally focuses her attention on Damon. His dark, bushy eyebrows are furrowed in the distance, and large veiny hands are raised to clasp themselves around his throat. She can practically feel the air around her desperately trying to work its way down Damon's throat to feed his straining lungs. Her eyes travel to Kai, who's ringed fingers are spread towards Damon, the corner of his upper lip stretches upwards as he takes in Damon's suffering.

Somewhere in her weak state, Bonnie finds it within herself to protest.

"Please, don't."

Her voice is soft, and slightly hoarse from all the choking she's endured, but she knows that with their super-hearing, they both know that she's spoken.

She watches the smirk twitch on Kai's face.

"You know, I always wondered what you saw in him, Bon Bon. I mean you forgave him, _him, _practically ate out of his hands and kneeled over no matter how many times he insulted or berated or _used_ you_._"

Damon lets out another groan as he's forced to his knees, Bonnie flinches when his black jeans crunch loudly against dulled and bloody glass.

Kai turns to her then, his eyes holding that same blazing fire that they'd had when she had first tried to force him to admit his feelings to her.

But she's not focused on his words that are meant to cut through her. She supposes, that somewhere in the very back of her mind that Kai is making sense, but none of that matters.

Not when she could lose her best friend.

"I mean _come on, _he's a pregnant-lady-murdering abomination of nature, and—didn't he turn your own mother into a vampire or something?"

Bonnie swallows the scratchiness out of her throat and forces the old wound that Kai has reopened to stitch itself back up. She can't afford to waste time in letting Kai get to her. She uses her hands to claw against the wall behind her to push her body weight back into a standing position, her head comes to rest on the cold plaster as she gathers her breath from the exertion.

Kai's not looking at her when he addresses her for a third time.

"And yet you couldn't find it in that big ole heart of yours to forgive the one person who truly mattered in the long-run."

Damon abruptly splutters then. She watches in horror as blood begins to seep out of his eyes. His mouth hangs open and he coughs viciously as the crimson secretion dribbles down his chin and then spurts from his ears. Damon's face turns a terrifying red color, and his entire body hunches over as pain wracks his form.

Bonnie propels herself off the wall, launching herself towards Kai, aiming to grab onto the ripped fabric of his arm, only to stumble to the ground just short of him. Her palms fall directly onto the cracked glass littering the floor, but she doesn't even flinch as the sharp glass shards cut themselves across her now bleeding palms.

She watches, a hysteric sort of fear reaches her when she sees graying veins creep up from under the scuff of Damon's collar. It looks like he's being desiccated, like poison traveling steadily through his body, and it's only a matter of time before it reaches its destination.

"No! Kai! Stop! You're killing him!"

Her voice comes out louder this time. The exhaustion melts off her body, the adrenaline that pumps through her makes her alert of each writhe of pain Damon omits, each twitch of Kai's fingers causing wave after wave of power to crash onto Damon's desiccating form.

"And _still_, she defends you. I mean, Bonnie, what did you think would happen, that he wouldn't take the opportunity to leave you here to die so that he could go back to his precious Elena? That he would fight for you?"

He turns to her with an eyebrow raised, his dimples ghost against his skin as he laughs incredulously at Bonnie. He turns his gaze back to Damon's crumpled form and she can see Kai's Adam's apple bob in his throat as he swallows his grin into a thin line.

"You're deluding yourself."

His voice turns bitter as he mutters that last part. A shadow appears over his face as he continues to stare at Damon's dying form. His anger has settled into something calm, into something morbid and uncaring. There is no doubt in Bonnie's mind that he will kill Damon if its the last thing he ever does.

Bonnie's grief catches in her throat as the graying veins travel higher, almost covering the entirety of Damon's face. She's so frightened and so certain that Damon will die that she can't even will herself to get up from her knees. Her aching terror explodes outwards instead.

"Kai! Stop!"

The scream is so frantic and piercing and devastated, that it finally directs his attention towards her.

His head swivels towards her disgruntled state on the floor, but his hand slowly ceases its magical onslaught in Damon. She carefully watches the ringed hand that has lowered in surprise at her outburst with her face twisted in horror, and fresh tears dampening her cheeks. Her eyes frantically skid over to Damon's unconscious form, waiting to see him fully dessicated, only to watch the graying veins gradually dissipate from his bruised and battered face.

Orbs of green finally settle themselves back on Kai's face. A somber silence fills the room.

He simply stares at her with those gray eyes, as if seeing her for the first time, like he doesn't recognize her.

Like he'd expected differently from her.

His eyes drift onto the floor, to the space right between them, they unfocus, and then he's deep in thought, somewhere far away.

Damon's body lays stagnant and unmoving in the background.

_I just need you to give me one more chance _

She remembers thinking then, that his eyes were such a delicate blue color that they were almost transparent, just tinted with a twinge of light gray. She remembers wondering in 1903 how eyes so beautiful could hold so much malice.

That guy at the Grille. She hadn't wanted to give him a chance. She'd refused to. Because she'd hated him just as much as the guy who left her out to bleed alone at his childhood home. Maybe even more.

She knew now that her hate had been misplaced. It was misplaced if it meant that she could have avoided what was standing in front of her now.

The way he had tried to kill Damon so tactlessly, the way he had looked at him so cruelly, it almost reminded her of the monster he had been in 1994. The one who made others suffer if only for his own benefit and spite. Except she knows now that he wasn't doing this only out of spite.

That was the _old_ Kai Parker.

What he had said about Damon to her while he was making the blood seep from his brain was a direct attack on her.

It was from the workings of this _new_ Kai Parker the one who only wanted her to suffer, who only wanted for her to see the blinding truth in her own errors and mistakes. To _feel_ the same pain that he had.

Their adversaries from before—Kathrine, Klaus, the Originals—had never bothered in making her suffer explicitly for things she did to them. They had been concerned with _everyone_ in the Scooby gang to ensure their goals. Sure they'd threaten a family member or a boyfriend of hers, but never had they done something like torture someone she loved in front of her, with the sole purpose of making her suffer. Because the thing is, none of the enemies she had ever dealt with involved _her_ suffering as their end goal. Never had their attacks been this personal. Never had they went out with the sole purpose of attacking _her_ character, her self-righteousness and need for protecting those close to her.

Kai was different from the others.

He wasn't killing Damon because he hated Damon, he was killing Damon because he hated _her_.

_Resented her_, she reminded herself.

Because it all lead back to that missing puzzle piece. All because of what she had done to him back in 1903. All because she had looked at the overwhelming sea of emotions swirling within pearly gray eyes as he begged her to give him one more chance, watched the bright dimpled smile that lit up his face when she had pretended to, saw his grief and devastation as he told her that he had changed for the better, and _still_ betrayed him.

She had been hurt and angry beyond measure, so consumed with hatred for him that she hadn't been able to think logically. She had been so twisted and influenced by her own selfish need for revenge that she had never considered anything else.

She remembered what that kind of hurt did to her. And she remembered what the revenge did too. It had felt good at first, and then it had felt like nothing.

And then the nightmares started. And all she could think about were paranoid thoughts of Kai escaping the prison world, which had marred over the realization that her revenge had still done _nothing_ for her.

It hadn't filled the aching gap in her soul that had been left there the moment she decided that she _needed_ to take her own life after months of solitude. It hadn't fixed the steep aloneness she had felt at the rave amidst a crowd of people. Hadn't stopped her from drifting off into her own head to escape the overwhelming amount of background noise and the presence of other people, even if they were people she loved. It hadn't distracted from the fact that Kai Parker was the first person she ever killed.

It hadn't helped her be herself again.

She'd done this to Kai back when she didn't even believe that he'd had any real emotions to be felt. She'd been wrong.

Because he's just as hurt as she was.

And she knew that _this_, what Kai was doing to her, in hopes of filling that aching hole of hurt that she'd carved into his soul, it wouldn't help him either.

And she knew that ultimately, maybe nothing ever would.

She closes her eyes then, briefly, wondering if Kai's off center gaze means that he's contemplating his actions just as much as she is.

And then she exhales and finally stands, and staggers onto her tattered boots.

He doesn't look at her.

But she needs to say this, even _when_ it ends up killing her.

"Listen, Kai. I screwed you over back in 1903, I know that, and I know that that was a mistake. And I know that you're hurting right now, and you want me to suffer, but that won't truly make you happy in the long run."

His eyes snap determinedly to hers then. A sort of salaciousness has shadowed over the far away look that had been on his face.

And she's about to continue, but both of them still when they hear Damon let out a sort of dry wheeze. She can practically see the murderous intent creep back onto Kai's face and his spine straightening at the sound.

But she won't let Kai turn his attention back to Damon to distract himself from her.

She steps closer and hurriedly pushes out words that she knows will keep his gaze on hers, and away from her best friend.

His revenge was about _her_ and only her.

Her brain wracks itself, thinking of 1903, of the one thing he wanted from her that she could still give, besides her suffering.

"You said to me once, back in 1903 that you just wanted one more chance. I can _give_ that to you. I wasn't ready to forgive you then, and I'm not sure I am now. Because you seem to forget that you've also hurt me more than anyone else has.

"But despite this, I know that nothing either of us do—no matter how much we try to hurt each other—will be able to change what's happened in the past."

His face changes again, and she's not sure if it's blankness is a good thing or a bad thing. So she swallows again, her eyes briefly flickering to Damon's limp form despite herself, before walking close enough to Kai that she can see the faint scar that's diagonally etched onto his forehead.

"But if you stop this now; Stop the killing, undo the spell, we can change what will happen in the future, for the both of us. I can give you that second chance. I _will_ give it to you"

She speaks her words with a conviction that she hadn't thought possible, and stares into the eyes of the monster who had hurt her more than anyone.

And although she doesn't quite believe her own words, doesn't quite believe in the sanctity of either of their futures, what she does firmly believe is that this resentment that he holds for her won't go away in the way he is hoping it will, so there's no shame in trying it her way.

In the way that will give _both of them_ that second chance.

She thinks of Damon, and of Elena, and of all the people she could've saved if she had just given him that second chance the first time around.

Even if she hadn't meant it.

Even if she doesn't mean it now.

He's still looking at her with that blank look on his face, the one that doesn't give way to anything that he's thinking about, and even further, she can sense his aura as muddled and churning.

"I promise you we can do this _together_."

She doesn't know why she adds that last part, maybe because the blankness still hasn't cleared from his face, maybe because he really is one step away from finally ending it all, ending her life. Maybe because she wants him to believe that he's finally not alone in his hurt. They've hurt each other. But she knows how to fix him. She's gone the extra mile to offer her willingness, her _chance _that he had wanted so badly, and the promise that they'd get through this _together. _

She's offered him so much of herself that he may actually believe her. He _has_ to.

She had given him the one thing he knew she wouldn't be able to take back; a promise.

The blankness clears from his features slowly, in a way that makes her have to guess what emotion will replace it.

The feeling reveals itself plainly.

The icy chill that cuts through her is so deep and so malicious, that her entire body pauses its functioning.

She doesn't even get the chance to _think_ about anything but raw panic before an invisible hand clamps tight around her throat in a vice grip and drags her until her boots scuff against worn dress shoes.

His eyes pierce through her skin.

They're murderous.

She has never seen her death more clearly than when staring at his lethal visage.

Warm breath washes haggardly over her cheeks, his nostrils flare, and he gets so close to her fear-stricken face that she can see every single dark fleck of blue splattering the gray of his irises.

He speaks to her in a warning tone, and it's so low, so menacing, that she can practically feel the anger trembling underneath his will to maintain his control.

"If you're lying to me, I will make sure that you suffer worse than you can ever imagine, even worse than what I already had planned for you."

Her eyes squeeze shut, her body practically trembles with the need to get as far away from him as possible.

But she knows that this is him giving her her chance, and she needs to take it.

For _everyone's_ sake.

Her throat constricts so harshly at his threat that she hadn't noticed when his magical death grip had left her. She unsteadily meets his dark eyes again and has to swallow twice before she can respond to him.

"I'm not lying to you, Kai."

Her heart beats too frantically for anything to be discerned. She could be lying or terrified. Or telling the truth and terrified.

Or all three.

His eyes search hers again, in that familiar franticness, before he slowly takes a single step away from her. His eyes wander back to Damon's still form behind him before he turns to face her once more, his voice and gaze holding a sort of tenderness that surprises her.

"You have five minutes to say goodbye. I'm gonna wait outside."

She watches cautiously as he turns and stalks away from her, as if waiting to see him turn around at the last second and out her for trying to fool him.

"...B-onnie"

Her guard is immediately broken down once she hears the gasping croak sound from Damon's lips. She immediately rushes towards his side and doesn't care when her scabbing knees make contact with the shards once more.

"Damon, Oh _God_. I swear everything is going to be alright okay? I will get Kai to undo the spell, I just need some more time."

She settles Damon's head in her lap, her fingers running through the wet and matted raven hair on the top of his head. Tears begin streaming out of her eyelids as she takes in the dried blood that's caked itself all over his face. She holds out her wrist to his mouth, as a sort of offering, reminded of the time all those years ago when he had found her bleeding and bruised after the 1920's decade dance and fed her his own blood. That was back when the Damon she knew then wasn't the Damon she knew now.

Her eyebrows furrow when he doesn't take her blood offering and instead raises a shaking hand to gently cradle the side of her face.

"This...isn't...love."

Shock and confusion erupts through her at his omission. She blinks blankly at Damon, trying in vain to understand why his train of thought has lead him there of all places.

She thinks back to the tender way Kai had looked at her before he'd left, the way his voice had softened. That must've been what Damon had heard earlier.

Damon was right, that wasn't love.

That was someone getting what they wanted.

"Of course it isn't, but he—he needs me. And I—I can help him, help all of _us_ by keeping him at bay, and away from you guys."

Bonnie laughs in disbelief to herself as more tears stream down her face. The implications that she is actually willing to send herself off to Kai Parker of all people, that she had promised _togetherness _to the one person who remembered promises for 18 years at a time, that he is actually _waiting for her_ outside, is finally starting to sink in.

But it's for the best, she reminds herself. For her friends to be safe from him.

"And you heard him, I mean he _actually_ agreed to stop killing and to reverse the spell if I did this. I'm doing this for you guys. And it won't be goodbye forever. I will see you guys as soon as I can, you guys have my phone number—"

"—Bonnie…"

"Just, tell Elena I love her when you see her okay? And everyone else too. Matt a-and Caroline—"

She chokes up then, the steady stream of tears begin to pour down her face like a flood that doesn't plan on stopping. Her throat is filled with too many hysterical emotions that she doesn't know how to properly express.

So when she stares at Damon again, she allows herself just briefly to bask in the tender caress of his thumb thats still brushing against the top of her cheek bone. She allows herself to take comfort in someone she loves because she doesn't know how long it'll be before she gets to feel this safe again.

Before being stuck in 1994, she'd never thought she'd feel this way about Damon Salvatore of all people. He had been stuck in her stereotypical vampire box of vicious and selfish murderers who didn't deserve her respect. And then he had turned into someone she trusted with her life, someone who had fought every day to get her out of that prison world, someone who came to her rescue even though the love of his life was comatose, he'd become someone who she loved. And if she were being honest, Damon's voice was the only voice she could stand the sound of in those dark moments when she retreated into herself and couldn't bear to live through another day with so much noise.

All the words in the world couldn't describe how much he meant to her, how he'd cemented himself so deeply in her life.

So she decides to show him instead.

She leans down, and presses her warm lips onto blood-stained pillows. The hand that was caressing her face stills, but she feels the flickering of eyelids fluttering shut as his dark eyelashes brush feather-light against her cheeks.

The kiss wasn't meant to be romantic. It was more than that. It was a symbol of her gratefulness, for their friendship.

It was to say goodbye.

The kiss didn't mean that she was in love with Damon Salvatore, she simply loved him.

And now he knew.

"Goodbye, Damon."

Her eyes travel over his face once more with a sorrowed smile curving her lips, but looking at him becomes unbearable once she notices a glistening sheen swell over the clear blue of his eyes the longer he looks at her.

She gently rests his head back onto the bed of cracked glass and treachery below them, and makes her way out of the wedding hall.

.

.

She's in a hotel.

That much can be discerned by the sleek drapes and the pristinely white and already made bed in the center of the room.

She had fallen asleep on the way over, probably from being mentally and physically drained from losing so many bodily fluids. She was still consequently exhausted when she had awoken to the sound of the car screeching to a stop in front of the hotel valet parking.

The people at the front desk didn't even bat an eye at her and Kai's bloody and disgruntled forms, instead they merely nodded at Kai while he lead her to their room.

Which is how she ended up stuck in a hotel room with Kai Parker.

They were clearly in a room that he'd been staying in, as there was a half eaten bag of Pork Rinds on one of the bedside tables, and an opened suitcase strewn in the middle of the closet.

He hasn't said a word to her since being in the wedding hall.

She would say that his silence was unnerving, except that she can't help but feel grateful for it. Their relationship is fragile at best, and she feels as though anything regarding this night could easily break said fragility.

She stands awkwardly in the middle of the room as he digs through his suitcase to find an oversized shirt for her to sleep in.

She slips easily into the bathroom, exhaling with a palpable relief when she realizes she finally has a semblance of privacy away from him.

Her phone buzzes in her pocket. Her hands shake as she rips her cellphone from the tight confines of her jeans.

It's a single text. From Elena Gilbert.

She doesn't even get the chance to read it before her shoulders start shaking with sobs. She had thought that she was drained of tears, and yet it was as though she couldn't seem to stop crying.

Everything she had endured today, all the pain, suffering, sacrifice, it had all been worth it.

Her best friend was back.

She shakily wipes the tear droplets from her phone screen to read Elena's text.

_B, where are u? Call me as soon as u can. _

She feels a bite of pain and dread at having to explain everything that had happened to her, to the both of them today. So she trusts that once Damon heals, he'll fill in the blanks that she's unable to.

_I can't talk right now but I'm fine. Don't worry about me, just know that I'm safe. I'll see you as soon as I can. Love you. _

She slides her phone shut and presses it face down on the bathroom counter before her, closing her eyes and aiming her head to the ceiling, she takes deep breaths to prevent herself from falling apart again.

She makes sure to avoid looking at herself in the mirror directly.

After washing all the grief and sadness and consequent hopefulness off of her face, she peels her bloody clothing off her broken and bruised body and slips into the clean, oversized Nirvana shirt that Kai gave her.

It smells flowery like fabric softener, not like him.

And for that, she is grateful.

When she finally and carefully creaks open the bathroom door, she doesn't know why she's startled to see him sitting at the edge of the left side of the bed staring in her direction. His positioning tells her that he'd sat and waited for her to finish.

He's no longer wearing the torn and bloodied suit from earlier, but is instead donning loose gray sweatpants and a plain navy long sleeved sleep shirt. She doesn't know why the aspect of him wearing simple clothing is so bizarre to her, but it looks misplaced nonetheless. He looks so mundane and unassuming like this, like he wasn't capable of the evil he's shown her.

He's staring at her with a serious and contemplative look as she exits the bathroom, and she's not quite sure what to make of it. She takes steps towards him until his eyes have to travel upwards and his neck has to slightly angle itself backwards to look at her directly.

She lets out a long exhale of breath and her eyes briefly flutter shut before steadying themselves back on his contemplative face.

"Thank you."

They both know what she's referring to. She's assumed that while she had been saying goodbye to Damon, he had busied himself in undoing the spell.

And she's not quite sure if she means it, to him. But she sure is thankful that her best friend is no longer in a sleeping comma and he's spared her and the rest of the people she loves.

His eyes tear themselves away from hers to focus on the bathroom door beyond her, and she watches baitedly and a bit warily as he gives a stiff and somber nod in response.

She steps over to the other side of the queen bed and turns off the lamp sitting on the beside table to the right of her, before slipping her bare legs under the cool and heavy covers of the hotel duvet. She turns to rest on her side, her legs draw upwards slightly.

She tries to fall sleep, and for 30 minutes, she screws her eyes shut and waits for sleep take her exhausted state unrelenting, and brutally, like she deserves.

And for 30 minutes, sleep does no such thing.

She'd assumed that Kai himself had fallen asleep, as she could hear his steady breathing and nothing else from the moment she'd turned off her lamp and bathed them in pitch black darkness.

But then, she feels a soft dip in the mattress sag just behind where the curve of her hip bone meets the sheets.

Her eyes can't adjust to the pitch darkness that surrounds her, but she hears a bit of shuffling coming from Kai's side of the bed. It seems as though he can't sleep either.

The shuffling noises continue for a few seconds and then abruptly stop.

And then suddenly, a pale hand appears out of nowhere and splays itself gently onto the slope of her stomach, and she has to bite down the startled scream threatening to bubble straight out of her throat.

Her entire body goes rigid.

She's too angry to be scared, and is about to turn herself towards him so she can bear her teeth to his face, when he presses the entire length of his body against the curvature of her back.

She can feel everything about him.

His hard chest packing itself into the jutting bones of her shoulder blades, his pelvic bones melding into the curved form of her butt cheeks.

He's outrageously close to her, and yet she doesn't move.

She wants nothing more than to arch away from him, scream and wrench herself out of his grip, but she remains rigid. She remains "asleep."

She doesn't move a muscle, not even when she feels the slope of his pointed noise brush itself a path of goosebumps onto the back of her neck. Not even when he buries his nose straight into the curvature and keeps it there.

Not even when he exhales a steep and final sound of relief that rattles through to her bones.

Instead, she takes deep breaths to prevent herself from vomiting over the side of the bed.

She had thought earlier, that the thought of him wanting her was terrifying.

But this, this was _petrifying._

He doesn't hold her like someone who _wants_ her. He doesn't press his body to hers so intimately with the intent of possessing and corrupting hers.

There's intent, but it's different.

It's delicate and fragile, and _desperate_.

She had been in denial earlier when Damon had brought it up, but now?

_You're deluding yourself. _

Kai had said this to her earlier.

And he'd been right.

It's because she knows now, more surely than anything, that Kai Parker is in love with her.


	2. While You Were Sleeping

**While You Were Sleeping**

* * *

She's having a nightmare.

He can tell by the way her nose scrunches in discomfort, the way the veins in her neck slightly pulse and ebb with each clench of her jaw, how a slight sheen of sweat coats her forehead, from the small whimpers that occasionally spill from her plump lips.

It's adorable, really.

When he'd awoken, it had been to his abrupt disappointment when he'd discovered that their bodices were on complete opposite sides of the bed. But he couldn't even bring himself to be irritated.

Because it ultimately didn't matter that they'd awoken apart. What _mattered_ was that they were together in the first place.

Because if you'd asked him what was going through his mind when he'd decided to curl up against her sleeping state, he'd only have one answer.

He'd just wanted to _touch_ her.

And it was as simple as that.

It was a need that'd spread over him slowly. The longer she laid there, mere spaces away from him, the more his fingers itched to curl around the soft curves of her waist. Her body heat and vanilla scent wavered over and caressed his skin, but it didn't warm him enough, and the lack of contact between their bodies became unbearable. He couldn't help himself from tightly slotting himself against her.

He'd just wanted to feel the delicate fluttering of her heart against his rib cage, and hear each inhale and exhale of her shallow breath, reminding him that this was real, that he finally had her all to himself.

That he had finally gotten what he'd wanted.

Well, not quite what he'd wanted, but this was only the first step.

Because now it was a bit hard for his brain to remember what he had really wanted from her before being trapped in 1903. He'd become so grossly saturated in his revenge fantasy and his constant obsessive thoughts of causing her pain, that the notion of gaining her forgiveness had become a mere memory that'd floated farther and farther away from his grasp each time a pair of Heretic fangs punctured themselves into his skin.

And then, to make matters _worse_, he'd turned. His perceptions and emotions became excruciatingly heightened and muddled to the point where he could really only bare to keep grasp of a singular and familiar burning anger.

He'd been momentarily confusing and melding emotions together, after the merge, and that suffocating mess of emotions only grew stronger with his transformation. Everything he'd felt was equally painful as it was unbelievably confounding.

So he acknowledged the only thing that had managed to surface above the sea of jumbled emotions: _resentment_.

It was that carnal and fiery feeling of rage and hurt that had settled deep in his gut and soon bled over anything and everything else he could have possibly been feeling. He had grabbed onto it and it anchored him to reality, kept him from floating into the dark abyss of inherent insanity that he knew was chipping away at his resolve little by little.

It gave him clarity. It gave him a new purpose. It allowed him to sleuth, and to plan, and to calculate.

It allowed him to remember that she was supposed to suffer for what she had done to him.

He'd wanted to watch her spirit break and crumble. He'd wanted to watch her desperately and pleadingly attempt to put the pieces back together, only for him to viciously rip them apart again. He'd wanted her to be so broken and hopeless that she'd surrender to her suffering, and allow him to mold her soul into something ugly, and vile.

He'd wanted to make her _unfixable_.

And then kill all of her annoying friends as the cherry on top of his revenge-fantasy sundae, of course.

It was what they'd all deserved.

But then she had gone and distracted him, had gone and worried the tender skin of a perfectly plump lower lip between her teeth. A perfect lower lip that he quickly began to realize should've been worried, sucked, and abused by _him_.

She had all but bludgeoned him off his searing path of revenge with her unintentional seduction, until he was mindlessly staring at her mouth like a cuckolded dimwit. And then he simply _couldn't_ think about anything other than her teeth tugging at her supple lips until Damon Salvatore decided to walk in and ruin the moment.

It was a damn shame, really.

He's not so sure what her reaction had been in the moments leading up to Damon's arrival. He had been too busy selfishly worming his body closer to hers. He'd been too busy focusing on other...things. _Things_ that made the blood race in his veins, his brain dizzy with lust, and his mouth drag open in pleasured anticipation.

But then the "best friend" had decided to grace them with his excruciatingly late presence. And if he's being honest, it wasn't too hard to get back on track after that.

Damon's mere existence simply _irritated_ him to no end.

And so he was truly ready to end them both, had her deliciously bright magic thrumming through his fingertips and flooding through his veins. He'd held Damon Salvatore's pathetic and narcissistic life so beautifully primed to be crushed between his fingers.

He had been so..._close_.

But then she had started to reason with him. Had hacked at the already cracked and fractured remains of his soul in a way that had _actually_ gotten to him.

And he truly, _genuinely_ wondered how she did it.

He'd been gone, albeit a little distracted, but his dark desire to ruin Bonnie Bennett had sent him tumbling back into that familiar sociopathic void that had no means of escape. And yet she'd somehow wrenched his pre-1903 and post-merge self out from the thoroughs of the lost and vengeful person he'd become. She'd reassembled the broken, black and charred pieces of his heart into something almost salvageable.

Key word being _almost_.

Even still, she had been right, of course.

About his disgusting and outright pathetic feelings driving his revenge.

Because despite the hatred, the resentment, the darkness that shrouded him like a tarring second skin, she'd been right.

She had been right about every last bit of it.

She'd deliberately fed that desperate parasite inside of him, the one that'd latched onto his soul the minute he'd discovered she'd returned to the real world, and the one he thought he'd squashed once she'd turned around and left him in 1903. She'd used cajoling words, used a raspy and unusually tender tilt to her voice to finally satiate the monster that'd begged and screamed for her approval, and still screamed for it. And he knows that in that moment, she was manipulating him, and was bending his disgusting parasitical feelings to her will.

Except, that desperate parasite, _he_ just couldn't bring himself to care.

Because now it all just makes him wish he could go back to that blissful moment in time before the merge, back when Bonnie Bennett meant _nothing_ to him.

He wishes he could go back to when he couldn't even fully enjoy the fact that she was the first girl he'd seen in 20 years, because she quickly became an obstacle, one who'd he'd have to thwart to finally escape his prison world.

He wanted to go back to when he'd had to _lie_ when accounting all the characteristics of hers he'd "admired" under the crescent light of the eclipse in the caves.

Because in all honesty, he didn't admire her bravery. He thought it made her stupid and reckless. And he didn't admire her patience because he'd practically written the book on patience, or grudge holding (whichever one came first). He couldn't even admire her loyalty because it had been given to people undeserving of it. It had been given to people who'd had the _nerve_ to be late to their supposed best friends' death sentence.

To people like Damon Salvatore.

More than anything, he wanted to go back to when he'd been telling the truth when he'd said that Bonnie Bennett wasn't all that great.

Because the only thing that he'd ever _truly_ admired her for, was the fact that she'd bested him.

She'd hid her magic in the same object he'd tried to use as a pawn of manipulation. She beat him. And he'd hated her for it.

Because Kai Parker never loses.

There's really only one other person in his life who had managed to best him, and that person had landed him in a prison world for 18 years.

He doesn't count his little brother Joey, who used to beat him in Dr. Mario on the new Nintendo.

He hadn't been trying very hard to win back then.

And he hadn't been trying very hard when he'd gripped onto Joey's neck and forced his body underneath clear pool water until the skin underneath his fingers turned blue and the succinct sound of cartilage cracking reached his ears.

And he knows that he shouldn't, has no right to, but sometimes he misses his siblings.

He misses the sound of several feet padding along the hard wood of the family room below his. Misses the hand turkeys, and the colorful school artwork splayed crookedly on the refrigerator, and the matching christmas sweaters, and the plastic toys littered along the front lawn.

And sometimes, he feels sorry. For what he did to them. At least after the merge happened, he did.

It was like every emotion; everything he _should_ have felt; the grief, the shame, the profound sadness, came crashing onto him all at once, like he was finally _remembering_ what he did.

It was unbearable.

It was like Luke was inside him, and he was peeling his eyes open. And his eyes stayed open until he could see them and only them, and himself for what he truly was.

He'd felt the anguish he should've felt while he remembered how Josette lay whimpering on the floor with her face twisted in grief and a gash in her stomach. Feel the disgust he should've felt every time a tendril of excitement ran down his spine in tandem with each bash of his baseball bat against Ricky's face, until the blood had dripped and his skull caved.

He would've happily gone on feeling sorry for himself, feeling sorry about what he'd done to his siblings, write thousands of letters to Jo only to burn them all and start over again when his tears began to smudge the ink. He would've happily left Luke to assault his conscious to the best of his abilities, but then Damon had to go and mention that she was back.

And it was worse somehow. Worse in a different way.

With his siblings, his guilty conscious made him remorseful and sick.

But with Bonnie, it was different. It _hurt_.

Like a knife was being plunged into his own abdomen and being twisted and twisted until he remembered every single detail of agony that had been etched onto her pretty features when he'd plunged his own knife into her.

None of the siblings he had killed or attacked had to suffer for as long as she had.

And he'd even gone and cried for her. Cried so hard that he'd nearly passed out from exhaustion. It was the first time he had ever felt thoroughly disgusted with himself. It was like something dark and ugly had twisted around him and finally showed him his own monstrous reflection.

And then she had consumed his every thought in the nights leading up to the rave.

Sometimes, he'd think about the way those cat-like eyes of hers would turn sharp and then darken with fervor when she got angry with him. It was a look that he had seen a thousand times before back in '94, but it's a look that she had reserved just for him. He'd even memorized the way her Cupid-bow lips would pucker and twist in discontent when her attention settled on him.

He liked her anger, when it was directed at him. He could practically taste the fire on his tongue, it was _that_ visceral. And though her face would remain cruel and composed, the heat in her eyes gave her away. And he could feel her magic blazing and flickering, unsteadily, _threateningly_, like she was a breath away from exploding.

He liked her anger because he knew that she wasn't normally like this, even after covertly witnessing countless of her arguments with Damon. She was usually demure, selfless, rational, _moral_; she was a little firecracker sure, but she always reigned herself in in the end.

But with Kai, her control slipped so easily and messily from her determined grip, which was how he'd ended up with a pickax straight in his heart that first time he'd pushed her over the edge.

On the other end of the spectrum, some of his other thoughts about her, were disgustingly optimistic _illusions _that had churned and festered in his head to the point where he had actually begun to believe them.

He'd consequently filled his head to the brim with those delusions of her finally forgiving him and reluctantly agreeing to a tentative friendship. _A friendship_ that would then eventually become something more.

And _that_ is what made him hurt that much worse when he'd first felt the tip of her knife twist into his leg.

But it wasn't as if he was in love with her, _God_ no.

He didn't _love _anyone.

Not even Jo, or Joey, or Liv, or any of his other siblings. Definitely not Luke.

As a sociopath, he'd had soft spots for certain people, or _weaknesses_ as he'd liked to call them, never love.

Because as much as he'd thought about Bonnie Bennett post-merge, and about the things about her that made him feel disgustingly _soft_ and infatuated, after he'd been trapped in 1903, he'd thought about a hundred times more about the things he _hated_ about her.

Those dark thoughts would flit through his mind right in those airy moments when he was dangling in between consciousness. Those thoughts breathed through all of the substratal hurt he'd felt at her betrayal.

He'd thought about her self-righteousness, her hypocritical reluctance to trust him, her stubbornness. He'd thought about her scent, her lips, her eyes, her skin, how the jaded green of her eyes looked _against_ her skin. Thought about popping those gorgeous emerald eyes straight out of her skull. About watching crimson liquid drip from those succulent Cupid-bow lips. He'd thought about the exact shade of purple that would sprinkle her dewy caramel skin when he was done with her.

Because she didn't deserve the right to be so breathtaking, and so cruel.

He'd thought an awful lot about crushing and mutilating each aspect of hers that made her so painfully beautiful to him, with his bare hands.

And he's honestly surprised he hasn't eaten her yet, what with all the violent thoughts of mangling her stroking his conscious.

He hadn't fed all night. And according to Mama Salvatore, he should be through with transitioning. He had already tasted his first drop of human blood off of the skin of his dying fathers' face, and even though it was enough to complete the transition, he knew that it wouldn't be enough to satisfy his cravings.

Even still, when he'd buried his nose into the supple skin of her neck last night, and ran it along its throbbing carotid artery, he hadn't been overwhelmed with the need to bite into her delicious smelling flesh. He supposes that he could attribute his stunted hunger to his witch side, maybe his siphoning abilities have somewhat suppressed his instincts.

But there's this dark feeling that's wafted over him at the prospect of feeding. It's a feeling that tells him that if he had fed on Bonnie last night, he wouldn't have been able to stop. Not because he has no self control, but because he has no self control when it comes to _her_.

His body shudders as he imagines the hot spurts of potent and ancient witch blood splashing against the insides of his throat.

Bonnie jolts awake besides him, consequently jerking him out of his deep contemplation, almost as though she can hear his thoughts of devouring her.

He merely watches as muddy green eyes lock on his and then widen in a sort of comical manner. He hears the way her heart races at the sight of him and his eyes zero in on her dainty fingers tightly gripping onto the bed sheets under her.

He has to prevent the corner of his lip from quirking upwards at her unbridled astonishment and consequent fear at the mere sight of him.

Clearly, _someone_ had forgotten that he was still here.

It's oddly hilarious, watching her physically fight the urge to scramble away from him. How he can practically _smell_ the nervousness rolling off of her skin in waves.

He decides against laughing at her, though the cruel intention is bubbling up his throat before he can help it.

He decides instead that he wants to coddle her.

Because amusing as it was, something bitter placed itself in Kai's mouth at her frightened reaction to him. If they were going to be able to move forwards together, do the whole water under the bridge thing as she'd promised, he needed to show her that he was capable of caring; that he wasn't always the biting monster she thought him to be.

They needed to rebuild a foundation. Of what he wasn't sure. Trust would have to come later, as it took much longer to build; which he knew, he wasn't an idiot. But he needed to be calculated enough, _gentle _enough with her so that she wouldn't fear him, so he could get close enough. Which meant that for the time being, he needed to remain in control of his disorganized feelings, and needs to keep those dark thoughts he has about her from surfacing.

He watches as she takes a deep breath to steady her heart beat. She briefly squeezes her eyes shut before propping herself on her elbow. His large Nirvana t-shirt slightly slides off her shoulder blade, revealing the slight dip of her clavicle. Her caramel skin glows as the bone juts out, and the mere sight of the exposed skin makes her look like the perfect image of temptation.

His mouth goes dry.

Like, so insanely dry it's to the point where if he tried to swallow, it'd feel like two sheets of sandpaper rubbing together.

The heat that rushes through him and pools in his stomach is sudden and reckless, and before he can help himself, he's getting blistering images of his hot tongue curling and lapping at the dip of her clavicle.

And his gums _really_ itch.

He should probably leave before he tears through the curvature of that pretty little, _dewy _neck of hers. Before that darn control he was talking about goes straight out the window.

But he somehow manages to stem the hunger and yearning that's threatening to burst through his veins, and makes sure his new fangs don't pop out prematurely.

Instead he flashes her a dazzling, fangless grin and tries not to let it slip when she slightly flinches again in response.

"Sleep well?"

.

.

"Y-yeah."

It's a lie and they both know it.

What's really unnerving her is the fact that she can't tell whether he's being sarcastic or not.

He must have noticed her mini panic attack, and by the way she'd awoken in a cold sweat, surely he'd have noticed that she was having a nightmare.

She tries not to flinch a second time as he suddenly moves towards her. The bed dips under his transferred weight and a large ringed hand delicately brushes a tendril of brown hair away from her face. Her eyes narrow as she keeps her gaze rock steady on his, and tries not to shiver uneasily at the feel of his torrid fingers against her skin.

When she'd awoken this morning, _this_ was not the Kai Parker she had been expecting.

Albeit, she hadn't really been expecting anyone at all. There had been a brief moment—probably only a few seconds—where she had awoken so jarred and discombobulated from her nightmare, that she'd felt suspended in time, forgetting where she was and who she was, and then reality came crashing down on her as she took in her surroundings and the man staring at her expectantly from the side of the bed. And then, the longer she stared at him, the more she expected to see the brutal, unfeeling, Kai Parker from the wedding hall.

She expected to have to walk on eggshells this morning, to prepare herself for an onslaught of vicious interactions, or at least wake up chained to a chair or drugged in some capacity.

What she was _not_ expecting was this—this _tender_ Kai Parker.

She thinks that's what scares her the most about him; his unpredictable nature. He's dark and cruel one second, then gentle and innocuous the next.

She had allowed him to brush hair from her face, if only to study him, to see if he still had some deep seated anger ready to explode from inside of him from one wrong move from her. But by the way his jaw slackened when he looked at her, the way he took his sweet time in brushing the strands delicately into place, and from the way his shoulders drooped unguardedly, she knows an early altercation isn't what she should be concerned about.

He reminds her of the boy from the diner, the one who she could berate and insult and not worry about getting levitated or choked in response. Not that she had a problem with berating any of the previous versions of him. But the point _is_, she doesn't need to be as hyper-cautious as she once was, and she no longer needs to halt her tongue or actions to ensure her life.

Which is why she's not afraid when she firmly bats his hand away from her face after she decides that he has been lingering for _too_ long.

"What are you doing?"

Her voice comes out a little snarkier and slightly more contentious than she had meant it to, and so she silently prepares herself for a harsh rebuttal despite her previous knowledge of his placidness. He merely shakes his head, facing the sheets below them, so all she can see is the rough outline of a dimple poking out of his left cheek to show that he is indeed smiling and not planning her demise.

She's suddenly reminded of the terrifying thought she'd had of him the night before, when he'd decided to press himself against her, when he'd let out that deeply sated sigh of relief. She waves the thought violently from her memory.

And she doesn't wait for him to respond to her question; she has a feeling that she wouldn't like the answer either way.

"How did you do it?"

Her voice is softer this time, and she hopes he doesn't notice her overt attempt at changing the subject.

Cobalt eyes glance up to hers in confusion.

"How did you undo the spell? I mean, you said that there was no loophole, that I wouldn't be able to undo it."

Kai pauses, as if at a loss of words, he blinks a bit blankly at her before his face snaps back into a playful smile.

"Well of course you wouldn't be able to undo it, silly."

Bonnie raises a perfectly arched eyebrow in response, and her eyes follow his form as he unceremoniously lifts himself off the bed. His long sleeve shirt stretches across his broad chest as he rises, the hem rides up slightly revealing a hardened expanse of smooth skin.

She quickly adverts her eyes.

"I siphoned it, duh. I wasn't lying when I said you wouldn't be able to use magic to undo it. It would've killed you, which is why _I _did it, which took me like, 12 seconds by the way."

Bonnie lets out small incredulous laugh, her tongue coming to cluck at the roof of her mouth, and her face turning away from his line of sight. Of course all it took to unlink a powerful Gemini spell from her best friend was a bit of siphoning.

"Anyways, I have to go meet up with some...friends. You can help yourself to whatever's in the mini fridge or order room service. I'll be back around 1-2 hours from now."

Bonnie stares at him incredulously, somehow shocked both at how calvilear he's being, and at how he could possibly expect her to sit around and wait for him. Is he just going to leave her? With no fresh clothing, alone in a hotel room, in the middle of God knows where?

He clearly doesn't notice the outraged look that's begun to twist her features, as he hastily rips his black peacoat from the coat hanger in the closet and steps into worn boots.

She doesn't even bother to mention to him that he's still wearing his pajamas as the door shuts succinctly behind him.

.

.

When he had first met Elena Gilbert, he had been intrigued by her.

She was beautiful, had been one of the first living breathing females he'd been in contact with on the outside. She had meant something to Damon, which of course interested him in a way only sociopaths could be interested.

It had thrilled him when he'd felt the white hot flames lick and singe through his timberwolves shirt, only to realize that it was her doing. So he'd tried some shameless flirting, back when he'd kidnapped her, maybe to push her limits, see if she was as susceptible to the bad boy charm as everyone said she was. She was like one of those perfectly wrapped toys covered in gold and glittering wallpaper.

But then, as he spent more time with her, and began to unravel all the layers that made her novel and glow in the eyes of those Salvatore brothers, he had only been left to find something intrinsically dull.

Elena Gilbert was the dictionary definition of _boring_.

Much like a one trick pony.

Which is why he can't _for the life of him_ understand why people like Bonnie Bennett and Damon Salvatore cared so much about her well being.

He had been doing them all a favor if you asked him; putting her frail human body under a sleeping curse would guarantee that she wouldn't somehow get herself killed.

Because if his memory of stalking Damon and Bonnie in '94 serves him correctly, Elena Gilbert was _basically _nothing more than a pawn used for personal gain in Mystic Falls—which consequently put a certain Bennett witch at her beck and call.

It's a shame that all that fuss and sacrifice was all in the name of someone as horrifically uninteresting as Elena Gilbert.

Bonnie Bennett however...

"...Kai. Have you been listening?"

Pin-straight auburn hair invades his vision. Lily Salvatore stands rim-rod straight before him, her arms crossed over her light pink cardigan as he sits on one of the fancy chairs in the living room of the mansion they had rented out before the wedding.

He had cloaked it to ensure that Lily held up her end of the deal; give him her blood, and he would uncloak her family of misfits. He would've brought Bonnie to the mansion as his first option of residency, but the rest of the Heretics don't technically _know _what happened with Bonnie last night and have most likely presumed her to be dead, but he's sure they'll eventually figure out all the nitty gritty details without his help.

And the other reason why he didn't bring Bonnie here, of course, was for privacy reasons...

"Huh? Oh yeah...totally."

Though he hadn't been _listening_ listening, he knew enough to get the gist of what Lily Salvatore had been droning on and on about. The importance of keeping a low profile, no mundane killings, staying away from the Salvatore brothers, something about business with someone named Lorenzo, yada, yada, yada.

He'd been mindlessly playing with the tea tray set on the table in front of him. His nimble fingers would rip open sugar packets and make a pile of grains behind his tea cup every time Lily Salvatore gave that forlorn and slightly exasperated look at the other Heretics, the one where her eyebrows scrunched and her mouth drooped, like she's about to cry.

Nora smacks his hand away from the sugar packets.

He sends her a dirty look as she sits sort of slouched in the chair across from him and pretends to inspect her nails with an overwhelmingly manicured eyebrow slightly quirked.

_Bitch_.

He still holds a resentment for the Heretics, sure. They weren't exactly the _nicest _group of snooty early 20th century British people he'd ever met. Especially not since they'd practically used his body as an all you can eat Buffet until it was time to concoct a plan of escape, but he needed these people. They were basically the last of his coven (and no he's _not _going to allow himself to waste time feeling like shit about killing the rest). The Heretics were what fueled his Gemini leader magic, and without them, he'd just have the magical capacity of a slightly above average warlock. And they were also valuable for information. They were old, but smart. They knew about powerful curses and spells and historical coven events that occurred centuries before he was even born.

Which is the sole reason for why he had even bothered to come here in the first place.

He needed...information on a Gemini related question.

But he made a calculated decision to wait until after Lily left to do business with this Lorenzo guy. Nora and the blonde Heretic—the one who used to take large and sloppy bites out of his carotid—immediately start to complain about the lack of freedom Lily's been granting them, while Valarie leaves the room to go God knows where.

Well, it was better late than never.

Kai clears his throat, abruptly cutting through all the whining and successfully diverting the attention to himself. He makes sure to flash his most blindingly condescending grin before speaking because he can see Nora's feline eyes narrow out of the corner of his vision.

"Hey so, _totally_ off topic, but I was wondering if any of you guys knew anything about siphoning curses."

He steadies his look at Nora pointedly, whose eyes have narrowed even more, if possible.

What he _really_ wanted to ask was if any of them knew if there was a way to be turned into a siphon via witchcraft, but they weren't there in the conversation yet.

"And why do you want to know about siphoning curses?"

It was the annoying blonde one, Mary-Anne or whatever her name was. She steps a bit protectively in front of Nora's chair, as if to shield his gaze from her, and he has to physically resist the urge to scoff.

"No reason."

He replies glibly, but clenches his jaw when he sees Malcom steady a disbelieving look at him.

"Ugh fine, you got me. I'm just curious about our history is all. I mean, when I was Gemini leader—still am, by the way, in case any of you have forgotten— there was practically _nothing _in the archives about siphoners. Those pesky Geminis really tried their darndest to erase everything, as I'm sure you all know."

Thelma and Louise stare blankly at him.

"Oh, come on. Don't tell me you guys aren't interested in learning more about your own heritage?"

He looks around when he is met with dead silence, even giving an imploring look to Beau, momentarily choosing to ignore the fact that he is the only one who quite literally can't give him an answer.

"You're better off searching for an answer in NOLA. They've got all kinds of resources, including information on the Gemini coven if my memory serves me correctly."

The mousy one, _Valerie_ who was apparently eavesdropping from outside the room, enters and crosses his chair to snatch a crumpet off of the tea table.

Kai slowly nods his head to himself. He's never been to NOLA but he's heard a few things about it's magical history. It'd be a good place to start, after all. He'll have to ask Valarie later if there are any specific witches she'd recommend.

"Well, alright then. This has really, _truly_ been a riveting conversation, but unfortunately I have to go and be literally _anywhere_ else but here."

He quickly pats the arms of the chair before springing to his feet and snatching four crumpets to stuff into his pajama pockets.

He's thankful that the Heretics don't question his sudden exit, nor do they inquire about where he's staying. It's better this way if they remain uncaring about him. He keeps his alliance with his coven, and they stay out of his business.

It's a win win if he ever did see one.

He breaks off a piece of crumpet and shoves it into his mouth, as he strolls down the street. The flakey breading doesn't taste quite as good as he remembers it to. It's lack of flavor is actually kind of off-putting to say the least, but he keeps whistling, ignores the weird looks he gets from old ladies walking their dogs, and continues on his trek back.

He ultimately decides though, as he rounds a familiar apartment complex, that he can afford to make a quick pit stop.

.

.

Bonnie wastes no time the minute Kai exists the room.

Her cellphone practically explodes with the sheer amount of messages she's received from her friends. But she won't read them, not until after she gets to Whitmore.

It takes her a while too. A thirty minute uber ride and a walk all the way to the front entrance of the college.

There's no one in the dorm when she gets there. She takes the opportunity to shower, scrubs at the uneasiness lingering on her skin from the nightmare she had, and changes into a fresh set of clothing. She dusts some foundation against the tender welts forming around the sides of her neck. If she presses hard enough, she can feel phantom prints of Kai's rings pressing into the delicate skin. She can already feel the inquiring gazes of pity that would scan her throat if she hadn't, feel Damon's proding eyes, and the castigation on the tip of his tongue.

She adds more foundation.

Against her better judgment, she decides to pack a backpack with clothing and toiletries, for when she eventually returns to the hotel, before Kai realizes she's gone.

She hasn't read the messages even when she steps onto the patio of the boarding house. She can see Tyler and Caroline's cars parked on the lawn out front, so she's not sure why she's surprised when she swings open the large wooden doors and sees _everyone. _

She hasn't even gotten the chance to take a breath before her bones are quite literally being crushed in a hug. There's two people on her, and she can't quite see because there's too many tendrils of hair obscuring her vision, but she can determine her best friends from the familiar perfume and the sets of nimble fingers curling around her shoulders and neck. That and the incessant blubbering coming from Caroline in particular.

She lets out a deep sigh of contentment. Knowing that her best friends, that _Elena_ is safe, after everything they've been through, is all that really matters to her.

"Alright, alright, lets not kill Bon Bon before we even have the chance to have her back."

It's Damon, whose tall form she can barely make out over Caroline's pointed shoulder. Elena has long since detangled herself from Bonnie, but Caroline seems determined to hold onto her for as long as physically possible. And if she's being completely honest, Bonnie's grateful for it. She hadn't felt this savored in a long time.

Elena gingerly peels Caroline away from her, and Bonnie takes a tentative first step in Damon's direction, before abruptly stumbling into his arms.

Her body packs tightly into the hardness of Damon's chest. His large hands rest tenderly around her shoulders, and she knows she shouldn't be embarrassed, but she can't help the blush that floods to her cheeks as she remembers their parting conversation. Or rather, what happened afterwards.

She pulls back slightly from Damon's embrace, his v-neck shirt scantily sticking to hers like film and she pauses briefly when she notices an indecipherable look flit between one ice blue eye to the other. Before she can open her mouth to speak, Matt, and Tyler are whisking her into another bone-crushing hug, and this time, she can feel her shoulder dampen with moisture, and her heart swells when they pull back and she sees Matt's baby blue eyes a bit glossy and red rimmed.

Caroline clears her throat and abruptly pulls Bonnie to stand in between her and Elena in front of the fireplace. Bonnie's eyes cross over to Stefan, who's sitting on one of the embroidered chairs, and gives her one of those 'I'm glad you're back' smiles, which she returns in kind. She turns her gaze back to Caroline, who's quickly wiping off the residual tear stains smudging her mascara, before directing her attention to the rest of the room.

"Um, okay everyone. As much as we're all incredibly grateful that Bonnie is okay and isn't... well _dead_, there's a reason I asked all of you to come here today."

She takes a deep steadying breath and Bonnie's gaze turns curious when she sees Caroline's blue eyes briefly lock with Damon's, who's standing directly across from them with his arms folded.

"Damon and I _think_ we have a way to take care of our little Heretic problem."

When Caroline does nothing to extrapolate further and instead swallows nervously and then cuts her gaze pleadingly back to Damon, Bonnie sees Tyler huff a bit and then raise his eyebrows out of the corner of her vision.

"Well...what is it?"

Tyler's voice rises over the confused air that's befallen the room, his arms cross over his broad chest as he goes to sit down next to Matt on the leather couch.

When Damon does nothing except pointedly stare at Caroline and ignore her silent and very obvious attempt to get Damon to reveal said proposal, she lets out an irritated sigh and flings her hands upwards in exasperation.

"Ugh, fine, since _Damon_ doesn't want to tell you guys about what was mostly _his_ idea, _I_ will," Caroline shifts awkwardly in her flats, her gaze scanning everyone in the room but oddly skipping over Bonnie, "We want to trap the Heretics...in another prison world."

Bonnie can't quite put her finger on why Caroline's acting so nervous, and while it's throwing her off, Bonnie's forehead crinkles as the idea settles.

It could work, trapping them in another prison world, hypothetically, and with enough power.

Bonnie chooses not to think about the fact that the last time someone managed to trap an entire group of Heretics, that someone was an _entire_ coven, and had the help of an all-powerful leader. This time around, they have one witch, four vampires, and a werewolf as their sole firepower.

The more she mulls the plan over in her head, the more she picks and prods at the logistics of it working, until she precipitously stops once she feels several pairs of inquiring eyeballs settling on her face.

"Why are you all looking at me?"

She doesn't know why, but she feels herself getting angry, maybe because she feels that familiar edge settling in her that tells her she's going to be asked to do something impossible.

Stefan, Matt and Tyler have enough decency to sheepishly lower their gazes from her, but a flash of irritation floods through her when she sees Caroline's gaze flit _again_ to Damon who's standing contemplatively in front of them.

Her eyes immediately narrow in on the 173 year old vampire, whose bushy eyebrows have arched in a wild fashion and plump lips have sucked in a sharp breath, as they typically do before he prepares to pacify someone.

"Well, you _were_ kind of the last person with the 1903 ascendant, Bon. And you're also a Bennett witch so—"

"—Are you saying you want me to create another prison world?"

Her voice comes out rightfully outraged and just shy of menacing.

She can't help it. She just wanted them to get it over with.

It was the only logical explanation. The Heretics already _knew_ how to get out of the 1903 prison world, they'd need a completely new one to keep them trapped.

She knows that Damon likes to tip-toe around disputable situations when haggling for assistance. And she's now understanding Caroline's earlier shiftiness and reluctance to reveal the plan. But she can't be too mad at the others, this was mostly Damon's idea in the first place.

It's not that she's disappointed in Damon for sneaking in the unspoken suggestion, but more so disappointed in herself for expecting more from him.

Their friendship is much like this in many ways: a constant push and pull, a pulsing of hope and then an ebbing of concrete disappointment. One second she's extremely grateful to have him in her life and can't imagine it without him, the next second they're at each other's throats and she's suddenly wondering if their friendship was all some sick ploy of his to get her to do his bidding.

Whatever they're asking her for, she's allowed to be angry because she knows that she'll do it for them regardless of the consequences.

And besides, the more she thought about it, the more she realizes that the idea in itself is ludicrous.

She's not nearly powerful enough to create a prison world alone—possibly without a celestial event—_and_ without the assistance of ancient Gemini magic. And considering they have no Gemini allies that are currently _alive_, they have even less of a chance of this working. Even if she somehow got Kai to take her to the Gemini archives, she has no doubt that it wouldn't take him long to figure out what she's up to.

The silence that follows after her accusatory outburst is deafening.

It had landed like a blow, and she can't help but think that she's being too harsh. Surely they'd know that she doesn't mean her anger completely, that she'd still try her best to help everyone and trap the Heretics, that it's not them; she just simply _can't_ help the bitterness that festers in her gut every time they ask for her help now.

They're all still staring at Bonnie a bit wide eyed and tentative, and she feels Caroline shift besides her, about to form the beginning of a sentence, when Damon hurriedly cuts her off.

"No, of course we don't want you to make another prison world, Bon. We'd need a whole lot of Gemini magic and spells and grimoires; all things we don't have access to. But if we _did_ happen to have the 1903 ascendant, to make some _tweaks_ to—"

She knows how this goes. Damon will just keep digging and digging until he finds something of substance to gain, only this time, she's not sure he'll be able to scrape deep enough.

"—Then you'd be out of luck. I destroyed the 1903 ascendant already."

Bonnie grits her teeth as the words spitefully push out of her at her own accord, slightly regretting her decision to tell the truth when she sees Elena's doe eyes widen a fraction of a centimeter larger from the corner of her vision.

"You _what_?"

She sighs at Elena's outburst. Damon's fingers come to rest at his hips as he gazes up at her, waiting expectantly yet warily for her to continue, while Elena continues to stare at her sort of wide-eyed.

And she supposes that everyone (besides Damon) deserves an explanation, especially when she sees Stefan press his lips together into a thin line and focus his attention to the floor in that way that lets her know that he's restraining himself from commenting.

"Back when Damon was trying to use the ascendant as leverage over Lily, I decided to destroy it so that Kai and the Heretics wouldn't be able to escape. Not that _that_ made any difference," she mutters that last part under her breath, but picks up her cadence into a more hurried crescendo as she addresses the rest of the room, "So unless you guys have another ascendant—"

"—Oh...but we do."

She refrains from rolling her eyes when Damon's smug tone cuts her off yet again.

"I figured after our little incident that you'd destroyed the 1903 one, but I just wanted to make sure before we proceeded onto plan B. Ric told me that back at the wedding, before Kai killed himself and turned, that _Daddy dearest_ was trying to send him to another prison world, which means..."

"...There's another ascendant."

This time it's Elena's somewhat raspy voice cutting through the distilled simultaneous realization that's percolated around the room. Damon's eyes flare micheaviously and a familiar devilish grin stretches slowly across his face.

"Exactly. The only problem now is, we have to find it. Ric was supposed to help me look for it today, but he seems to be running a _bit_ late."

Damon's eyebrows scrunch together briefly before he merely shrugs his shoulders, as if deciding that Alaric's unexpected absence isn't something he needs to be concerned about.

If what Damon was saying is true, If there is another ascendant out there, she will ultimately be the one responsible for it; even though she _won't_ have to create another prison world.

"Well, let's not waste anymore time then. I'm coming with you."

She gathers her backpack trap higher upon her shoulder and takes a determined step towards the doorway, when a warm hand rests gently on her shoulder, preventing her from reaching the outside.

She wants to be angry that it's Damon's who's stopped her.

But the longer she stares prepensely into icy irises, she finds the fight in her dissolving, its drainage causing her squared shoulders to slump.

She already knows what he's going to say before he even opens his mouth; yet another side effect of spending so much time alone with him in an isolated environment. It's gotten to the point where she can practically decipher the meaning of each crinkle that lines his forehead.

"Like hell you are, Bon Bon. _Your_ responsibility is to play house with wonder-wizard and keep him as far away from our plan as possible. We can't have any of the Heretics finding out about this. And maybe, while you're at it, you can figure out if the little weasel's making any special plans with his merry band of misfits that we should know about."

It makes perfect sense if she's being honest.

Everything he's saying does.

But something about Damon bringing up her situation with Kai causes a large blanket of dread to wrap around her. The same dread that had ladened her when she had awoken from her nightmare this morning; a nightmare that had been undeniably about _him. _

And the dread is sudden yet constricting, to the point where her entire body pauses, and she can do nothing but stare at Damon as she feels her own face droop into a scowl. She had successfully been slapped with harsh reality. She had momentarily forgotten that she'd have to go straight back into the lion's den so soon after being granted a brief taste of "normalcy".

Making a completely new prison world now seemed easy in comparison to being tasked with sleuthing around Kai.

He was perceptive, and unstable, she could never quite pin which state of mental duress he was in, definitely not since he'd emerged from 1903 an unhinged, yet unbearably fragile version of himself. If she wanted to get information out of him and figure out what he was up to with the Heretics, she'd have to be smarter than he was, and she'd have to be _careful_.

Bonnie curses to herself knowing that he's not even at the hotel as of now, when she could've been using the opportunity to dig through his things to find any slivers of valuable information.

_I mean, it was just this morning he had told me that he was meeting with— _

—The explanation dawns on her hurriedly.

"He's with them right now...the Heretics, I know he is. He told me this morning that he was meeting with some friends. I don't know why I didn't figure it out sooner, I mean it's not like he actually _has_ any friends—"

She says it kind of startled herself, the words tumble quickly and eagerly out of her mouth as the realization spreads through her like inferno.

Damon swears loudly under his breath.

"Well that's just great. Knowing my mother, they're probably concocting some grand scheme of universal destruction as we speak. Not to mention none of us have the slightest idea as to where Enzo disappeared off to..."

.

.

His lips are still puckered into an 'o' even when the whistle dies in his throat as he rounds the corner to the apartment complex.

He doesn't need to get inside, he just needs to be standing at a certain angle, so that his body is projected at a certain orientation, so that he can see inside a certain someone's living room window.

He knows he looks strange trying to peer through the window; he's standing in the middle of the street, his neck is cranked uncomfortably to the side, eyes squinting and teeth sort of bared in that fashion where someone snaps a polaroid of you and the flash is so bright it feels like a gunshot.

But he sees it regardless.

He supposes he should thank his vampiric perceptions for that; his ability to focus on something as trivial and minor as two Whitmore Hospital coffee mugs sitting abandoned on a singular worn green placemat on the kitchen table. His eyes focus meticulously on the lip stains, the faint gloss still smeared on the rim of one of the cups, while a pinkish hue is printed in a perfect ring on the other.

And it's enough for him.

And he maybe feels a swell of relief flood through him, and a nervousness he didn't know was there flush out, but he decides not to dwell on it—them—_feelings_. After the merge, after _turning _he's been tending to neglect them when he can, before they can teeter past the threshold to overwhelming, as they often do.

Right now, he settles on a shallow feeling of contentment, maybe even happiness; his job is done...for the time being.

So he promptly turns on his heels, saunters away jovially from the complex, and overturns his pajama pockets that have become dusted with crumbs.

His lips round again to let a small stream of air out. He's not sure which tune he's whistling to, it honestly may be a combination of both a Pearl Jam and Nine Inch Nails song, not that it matters. It's not like anyone nowadays knows what _real_ music is like.

He's sort of walking around aimlessly now.

He's not in a familiar neighborhood anymore, and for some reason he's not concerned, he's actually more at ease than he's felt in a while.

He has a feeling that he'll be able to find his way back to the hotel regardless. It's not like anyone back at the hotel would miss him; he'd long since used some Gemini leader witchy-woo and spelled them all to not care or acknowledge any of his...suspicious endeavors.

As he continues walking, he begins to acknowledge that he's in one of those suburban neighborhoods that consists of a singular winding road.

The houses are spread far apart on either side of the road. They're large and expensive looking with even larger lawns.

But the neighborhood _feels_ barren.

But at least he knows he's somewhere near the Mystic Falls border, can recognize the fields that are spread along the horizon after the winding road tapers. They're the fields that settle just before the 'Welcome to Mystic Falls' sign, and he's almost tempted to make another quick stop, this time by the boarding house.

He's _almost _tempted, that is.

He'll wait until the right moment to insert himself back into the likes of those people.

If he's being completely honest, he really has no desire to.

It's not as if they've ever done anything for him, they certainly haven't done anything for Bonnie. But he decides that if he _does_ ever have to interact with them again, he'll do it at the worst possible moment, when they're in a state of distress, so that his mere presence causes that pile of distress to pile _that_ much more until it eventually topples over and obliterates everything in its path.

Maybe he's being too ambitious.

But it _is_ sort of his brand.

After walking for fifteen minutes with no noise flooding his ears besides the incessant buzzing of maggots and light fissures turning on inside of suburban houses; he hears it.

It's a heartbeat.

And he doesn't know why, but he stops exactly where he is.

His stomach coils immediately with hunger. It sort of takes him by surprise, the sheer potency of it.

He can feel it crawling up his veins, a burning heat flooding through his chest. And it's painful and unbearable, but it sort of feels good. Maybe because he knows that he'll be satiating that churning hunger clawing at his insides very soon.

He can tell it's a human heart from the power and pace of the heart's rhythm.

The heartbeat, it's not near, but it's near enough.

The blackened veins under his eyelids ripple and thrash viciously like worms.

His legs carry him with superhuman speed straight to the source.

He sees a man, about mid-40s, Ned Flanders mustache and all, jogging down the side of the road. He's got athletic goggles on and earphones in, and the wires are kind of clumped and tangled in the middle as they dangle by his chest. His black athletic shorts are bunched a little _too _high, he's got a sizable pouch of fat on his stomach that spills slightly over his neon green fanny pack, and is taking even more sizable heaving gulps of air.

The man is quite embarrassing to look at really, but Kai has never been so happy to see someone.

The man doesn't see him. He's too engrossed in trying to run or _whatever _he's doing, even as Kai blurs in front of him.

His stomach twists deliciously as the sound of rushing blood roars even louder in his ears. He doesn't bother with the compulsion, he hasn't quite gotten it down yet and he's too hungry to bother floundering with a meal. Instead, he opts for a quick silencing spell before flicking his wrist to drag the man to his knees before him.

It's broad daylight, and he's in the middle of the road in a fancy neighborhood, but he can't bring himself to care. He knows that the lights are on in the houses he's passed.

And he knows that people, _witnesses_ are there.

But he has a feeling that those people wouldn't care even if they saw what he was about to do. Rich people are like that; they're bounded both by fear and selfishness. He thinks that's what he likes most about this neighborhood in particular: the complicit _assholesness_ of it all.

His fangs elongate and he sinks his teeth deeply and harshly into the man's carotid. His eyes slip shut and a satisfied groan leaves his lips and his nostrils flare to suck in unneeded air as warm blood sloshes down his throat. The sloppiness of the bite causes long streams of crimson to leak down either side of the constricting muscles in his neck.

He knows in the back of his mind, somewhere deep in the satiated confines of the blood-lust that's dizzying him, that part of the deal he'd made with Bonnie meant no more killing.

But what she doesn't know won't hurt her.

He knows that he should stop.

He feels the man's heavy body growing limp and flimsy in his grip, the blood isn't coming out as strongly and pressurized anymore.

And it's not as though he's not sated at this point, he could very well leave the man to bleed out the scant leftovers of his blood on suburban pavement with his head intact.

He _very_ easily could have.

But there's something funny to him about decapitated heads, so he doesn't stop sucking until he feels all the sinew and muscle strung below his teeth give and then tear.

The guy's neck finally caves with a sickening crack, his body thumping abruptly to the ground, while Kai's fingers remain around the dripping meat of the throat. And he can't help it, his sociopathic nature is back full force and something giddy and warm floods through him as he breathes in the wonderful metallic scent of blood and sinew coupled with damp lawn grass and fresh crisp air.

He knows that it's wrong. Can practically feel the conscious that Luke gave him screaming in terror at his unriddled joy; but funnily enough, he just _doesn't_ care.

He'd always hated vampires up until this point. His hatred was as ingrained in him as the Gemini notion that he was an abomination was. But now he can't help but think that maybe this blood-sucking lifestyle suits him.

He makes sure to prop the head back onto the "dummy's" body, and wipes his bloody fingers against his pajama bottoms before beginning to trod back to the hotel room, his lips curving to whistle brightly again.

How hilarious would it be for the Scooby gang to find this body and automatically assume it to be Mommy Ripper's doing, or even better, good old Saint Stefano?

That should do well to send that group into that first state of distress.

.

.

She's not listening as Damon and Stefan continue to spitball off each other.

Her nightmare from earlier today has begun to infiltrate her thoughts at full force with all this talk about ascendants and prison worlds, and from that one brief mention of Kai.

The uneasiness she thought she'd thoroughly scrubbed away with her shower at Whitmore, comes back and prickles her skin, and causes her stomach to flop. The darkness seeps through her skin, creeps up her spine and curls around her body to lodge in her throat; she wouldn't be able to speak even if she tried.

Flashes of her nightmare skitter through her brain; images of her limp and lifeless body being thrown by a familiar monster into a prison world.

Her body lays trapped in an unfamiliar cold and barren world, utterly alone, a broken ascendant at her feet, and her bloodied heart lays stagnant on the cool ground next to her. The heart that _he_ ripped out for good measure.

She watches as he waves at her with fangs bared in a grin and bloody fingers, and she wonders why he doesn't lick the bright crimson off of them before vanishing in a beam of white light.

Much like how she's surprised that she has yet to see him feed from anyone. She realized at some point, through mulling over her conversation with Kai this morning, and just barely allowing herself to graze over what happened yesterday, that she never saw Kai feed. Her stomach flips again, but this time, false hope settles over her nervousness.

There's a slim possibility that he doesn't know how exactly how vampires transition; the Geminis were a very anti-vampire institution. She remembers him even saying himself way back in '94, that he didn't know much about vampires. The Geminis most likely didn't provide a lot of education on vampiric endeavours or history. He may not know that he needs to consume human blood in 24 hours to transition fully; he'd curiously opted out of feeding from her even though the opportunity had certainly presented itself. She ignores the shiver that crawls unmitigated up her spine as she remembers just _how _that opportunity presented itself last night, and instead focuses on the hope that spreads wider and deeper as dark thoughts of his body drying out and desiccating fill her.

She chooses to cling onto the hope that he will die tonight.

He could be dying as they speak.

He deserves it for what he's done to her in both her nightmares, and in reality.

But she supposes that this is all her fault; her continued fear of him. Only she could be held responsible for forsaking herself in his hellish clutches for the protection of her friends.

He'd started the fire, but she'd acted reckless enough to try and touch the flame.

Her friends haven't noticed her withered and self-deprecating retreat into her own mind.

They continue bouncing ideas off one another, though a grim air has fallen, she can tell, over all of them. Maybe because although they're happy that Bonnie's alive and well, the gravity of the other deaths are beginning to dawn on all of them. Liv and Jo, they won't ever get the chance to help.

She decides to will herself to listen, and Stefan's voice pushes through and surfaces above the foggy darkness of her thoughts of dreams and death.

"Let's not get ahead of ourselves, let's just think about what we can do so far. Bonnie can find out what's going on with Kai, and I'll try to make a truce with Lily, while everyone else retraces their steps to figure out where the ascendant is."

"Except that if it's not still in the wedding hall, we're all basically screwed."

Matt's gravelly voice plunders bleakly through Stefan's inspirited attempt at gaining some grounding, successfully hammering down the already somber blanket that's layering the room.

"Well one thing's for sure," Damon begins snarkily, his icy eyes taking on that widened and slightly feral look that it does when he's saying something sarcastic, "we can always count on Donovan to point out the most obviou—"

Just then, a crash sounds.

The front door to the boarding house door swings open and lands on the wall with a resounding crack.

Alaric bursts through the door, practically barreling through the living room.

He's holding keys in one trembling hand and pants haggardly, his face pale with panic and shining with beads of sweat bundled on his furrowed forehead.

"It's—it's Jo. Her body—it's gone."

* * *

**I'll be updating this fic every 2-3 months. Also yes, from now on I will be switching back and forth between Kai's POV and Bonnie's. **


	3. Black Hole Sun

**Black Hole Sun**

* * *

She's not here.

He's been sitting here for over an hour, there's an empty and crumpled space on the bed where she had woken up, and she's _not_ here.

He knows he shouldn't, knows that it's not the time to go crazy, just when he was doing so well in constraining himself, but he feels the panic creeping and spreading through him like wildfire.

She lied to him.

About everything.

That's the only explanation.

He had thought he was being smart, doing the right thing in giving her some space this morning, show her that he wasn't a controlling monster.

But the minute he had stepped back into the hotel room, expecting to see her maybe sitting on the bed or at the desk, maybe drinking a complimentary glass of water, only to see her not there, an unbearably cold and empty feeling had sucked all the air from his lungs.

The emptiness had whipped through him fast and hard, so that it hurt, almost as payback for being so foolishly trustworthy.

Because when it came down to it, he knew there was a possibility of this happening.

Somewhere deep, buried behind his hopeful imaginings of them starting over again, he ultimately knew that she'd leave him the moment he gave her the chance.

She's probably plotting his death with her little friends right now.

His refined disappointment, sadness, and emptiness, blindly molds itself into rage.

His jaw clenches, the molars of his teeth grind and the bones of his cheeks jut outwards. His fists ball so tightly that only the white of his knuckles can be seen.

He stumbles into the desk chair and reaches for a glass of water. The liquid that splashes down the inside of his throat is tasteless and unsatisfying. His fingers tremble as they smudge the cold fog on the glass.

He takes a deep breath, closes his eyes, wills his magic to stop flickering and rushing wildly under his skin, wills himself to not destroy everything in his wake.

Except each time he tries to calm himself down, he feels more angry heat slash through him, and crawl up his esophagus, ready to burst forth into a scream.

Because he can't help but think that this was probably exactly what she wanted; for him to lose his mind over her.

For him to slave over where she could possibly be, wait for her like a love-sodden idiot, try in vain to keep his emotions in check, viciously avoid calling the phone number Damon had given him so long ago, and _pridefully_ prevent himself from slashing through his palm to do a locator spell.

Because in her eyes, he deserved this. He's mutilated her will and mentally manipulated her for so long that it was only right to return the favor, right?

He chuckles ruefully to himself before sobering up, his lips immediately pressing together in contemplation.

Because despite all of this, he can't though, understand why all of this searing anger in him sort of feels like heartbreak.

The angry lashes of fire that flay at him cuts straight through his heart, without fail every single time he dares to take a breath.

He doesn't know why he feels the hurt so deeply, so viscerally and achingly.

Because he doesn't love her.

He _doesn't_.

It's got to be his vampiric emotions, exacerbating everything into a steep crescendo that won't relent until it builds to something utterly explosive.

He's probably overreacting.

Because there's still the softer part of him, the one that had grown a conscience, that feels bad.

It thinks that he's being unfair in giving her such unrealistic confines to begin with. It points out that he had never actually demanded that she stay in the hotel room the entire time. That he shouldn't have expected her to.

The other, unconstrained part of him wants to kill her.

In cold blood, and out of spite, like how he usually does.

For making a fool out of him.

For scurrying off the minute the opportunity presented itself.

For going back on all the promises she had given him; back when she had been desperate, back when her life had been dangling between his fingers.

And now he can't help thinking that he should have known. That she never meant any of it. She was just trying to save herself.

He should've known that she wouldn't have been able to help herself from being deceitful and cruel when it came to him. _Because _it was him.

He should've known that selfless Bonnie Bennett was just being _selfish_.

It takes shorter than usual for him to squash down his conscience and let his animosity swarm over the expanse of the soft _naive _emotions.

She better hope that he never gets the opportunity to find her.

Because when he stabs into the meaty flesh of her stomach for the second time, he'll make sure she stays dead.

Just then, the door creaks open.

.

.

Jo's body is nowhere to be found.

Neither was Liv's, as it turned out.

The news about Liv comes not three minutes after Bonnie is finally, _finally_ able to wrap her head around the fact that Alaric's trunk is completely empty.

They've all gathered back in the boarding house after scavenging through Ric's trunk like a pack of wild animals—Bonnie doing her best to look for any tell-tale flickerings of cloaking spells.

She hadn't felt any traces of dark magic while looking through Alaric's car, but Stefan pointed out the faint smell of Jo's dried blood that still speckled the bottom of the trunk.

Which _meant_ that Jo had been in said trunk at some point in time, and now, she just _wasn't. _

They're brainstorming possible scenarios in which Jo's body could've been moved. Simultaneously wondering if one of their _many _adversaries had stooped so low as to steal her deceased body as a last—

"—Oh my God," it's Tyler's voice that chokes out over the storm of voices talking over each other.

Several pairs of eyes skirt over to Tyler's bulky form hunched over his cellphone, his eyes large and bulging while they scan the phone screen over and over.

"Liv's alive," he chokes out again mere moments later, his glassy eyes rise to search the reactions from the rest of the room.

Elena speaks out first over the confounded silence that has suddenly blanketed the room, her perfectly arched eyebrows furrowing in contemplation.

"You don't think—"

"—Of course not."

Bonnie's voice cuts in this time, a little more harshly and more strangely defensive than she had intended.

It's because she knows what the others are thinking.

She can see it in their shifty glances at one another, in the way Stefan's forehead crinkles at her, in Elena's crossed arms and furrowed brows, in Caroline's nervous lip biting.

They think that this is _his _doing.

That he somehow found a soul before deciding to kill his entire coven and managed to salvage a failsafe for his favorite sisters.

But it isn't true.

It _can't _be.

Jo or Liv must've somehow known that something bad was going to happen, and then managed to save themselves, use a spell or _something_.

Because Bonnie of all people knows what it's like to be dead and then suddenly not.

Certain dark spells can funnel the life right back into your lungs, it may be filtered a bit differently, but it's life nonetheless. Which meant that this had to be the doings of some sort of Gemini magic, Liv must've—

"—She's turned."

Tyler's voice is strangely soft as he stutters over Bonnie's frantic thoughts of necromancy spells.

Everyone's eyes zero back in on Tyler's shell-shocked form. Bonnie carefully watches the lit up phone screen quiver slightly in Tyler's large clammy hands.

Someone lets out a curse under their breath, but the noise barely reaches her as a numbness glides down her spine and to her fingertips.

The chilling shock settles deep in the pit of her stomach and broils hotly before turning into dread as she takes in the news.

"And what about Jo?"

Alaric stumbles almost eagerly towards Tyler, knocking Damon out of his way with his mouth still set in a grim line. The sweat is less potent on his forehead than it had been when he'd first rushed into the boarding house, and his face is beginning to gain some coloring back.

"L-Liv thinks that maybe Jo's been turned too. Th-that their coffee tasted kind of weird the morning of the wedding, but they didn't think anything of it, but they—"

"—So somebody slipped them blood."

The _somebody_ is an unspoken revelation.

Bonnie's honestly surprised that it had taken Damon this long to speak up.

But that doesn't matter.

None of it does.

Because yesterday, Jo and Liv and the entire Gemini coven were dead.

And now, Liv and Jo might be vampires.

Jo's unborn twins may still be alive.

There was no point in further discussing anything, they needed to take action.

"I-I can do a locator spell to find Jo, and Tyler, you and Matt can go get Liv, and the rest of you can stop by the wedding hall to look for the ascendant."

It wasn't until after Bonnie had slit her palm open and watched her blood form a perfect circle on the map just a few miles east of the boarding house, in which a more concrete plan was formed.

Caroline had decided to join Stefen and Elena in their search for the ascendant, and Tyler and Matt wasted no time in leaving to go find Liv via Matt's old pickup truck.

Both Tyler and Alaric had grabbed a few fresh blood bags from the basement for good measure.

Bonnie had just been about to follow Alaric out the door when she ran into a rather hard chest. She doesn't even need to look up before knowing who the chest belonged to.

"Yeah...you're not coming with us, Bon Bon."

She watches as Damon's bright azure eyes make eye contact with Stefan from behind her.

Of _course _he'd somehow find a way to prevent her from going.

She can't halt the anger that readily floods through her, or from hotly replying.

"And why is that, Damon?"

Her mouth twists into one of those saccharinely sweet smiles, her real emotions given away by her harsh wringing of the strap on her backpack.

"_Because, _if what we _think_ happened to Jo is true, then you can't be with us."

Bonnie merely arches a single eyebrow at Damon. He'd have to do a whole lot better than a half-assed explanation if he wanted her to stay put.

Damon sighs at Bonnie's obviously unimpressed expression, rubbing his brow slightly before gently placing warm palms on her shoulders and looking her square in the eye.

"Listen, Bon Bon. Witch blood is a little more..._potent_ than normal human blood. And Jo is a newly turned vampire. Your scent—i-it may all be too much for her and she might end up attacking you."

She watches Damon's nostrils flare as he works slowly to get the words out.

Damon makes somber eye contact beyond her shoulder again, and Bonnie turns to find Stefan grimly nodding before awkwardly shifting his gaze towards the floor away from Bonnie's prodding eyes.

Well, this was news to her.

Never once had Damon, or even Stefan for that matter, told her that witches' blood was more rich and overwhelming in comparison to that of a normal human.

Maybe that was why none of them had ever fed from her.

Not that she was complaining in the slightest.

Sometimes she could still feel the phantom sting of Damon's fangs ripping into her throat on that cold night in the woods. Or Alaric sucking the life from her skin as her muscles slackened and surrendered to the ongoing pain.

It was something she never wanted to experience ever again.

So she'd stay, if only to help Jo stem her new cravings. And to prevent herself from being bitten again.

It was then that Caroline, who had been besides Stefan, suddenly stepped closer to Bonnie, a frown maring her pretty features.

"Wait a minute. Shouldn't you be getting back to Kai? He did tell you when he'd be back didn't he?"

And just like that, all contemplation of witches blood and Jo's wellbeing screeches to a halt.

"Oh my God," Bonnie chokes out, her green eyes widen and her stomach just about drops through to an alternate plane.

Kai had said that he'd be back at the hotel in around an hour.

She wasn't quite sure exactly what time it was, but she knew for a fact that she had been gone for more than a few hours.

Which poses the likely possibility that he hadn't dessicated from lack of human blood consumption by that time.

She pinches the bridge of her nose in aggravation.

How could she have been so abstracted?

The success of their plan for the Heretics relied on Kai Parker staying out of the loop.

Which was something that _she_ was solely responsible for.

"You're right. I-I have to get back before he realizes—I need some sort of alibi. He _can't_ know that I was with you guys, he'd just get suspicious."

She curses to herself and hastily checks her phone, not knowing why or how she thought that she'd have some messages from him. She's pretty sure she'd never given him her phone number.

She clears her throat instead, ignoring the worried glances she's getting from everyone—especially from Damon, who has stayed uncharacteristically quiet—and tries to smooth the worry lines off her own face.

"I'll think of something, okay? Just—don't worry. And text me when you guys find Liv and Jo and the ascendant and everything."

Bonnie practically sprints out the door after making hurried goodbyes to everyone, refusing to focus on the fact that Damon had chosen to remain mute all the while; his lips resoutley frozen into a thin line.

It's only until after she gets into her ride in which her alibi broadens upon her. It hasn't even formulated into a full idea yet, she's still tasting the spell she'll need for it on her tongue, before she's asking her Uber driver to drop her off at the jewelry store in town.

When she gets back—into a different Uber this time—the sky is plunging into dusk and her phone screeches with a shrill ring.

She sees the caller ID flash pristinely on her white phone screen and doesn't hesitate to hit the green symbol to answer.

.

.

Bonnie uses one hand to push against the smooth wood of the hotel door, while the other hand re-adjusts its hold on the white paper jewelry bag.

She doesn't see him at first.

The room is distilled in pitch black darkness, save for a slender shadow of light peeking in through the blinds.

She sets down the jewelry carefully on the bed first, finally lets her backpack drop to the floor in a succinct thud, and rolls the cramps out of her shoulders.

A voice floats through the darkness; gentle and smooth, non-threatening.

"Back already?"

She nearly screams.

The lamp flickers on from the desk across from the bed, revealing a rigid silhouette.

The warm glow of the lamp barely illuminates a face, but it reveals a faint outline of two eyes, narrowed and glinting murderously.

She flounders a little bit, her mouth opens and closes like a fish out of water.

She's so taken off guard by his sudden presence, and of the fact that he's drilling his stare into her like daggers, that all thoughts of her alibi have been forgotten.

She's suddenly not sure _how_ to explain herself.

A tendril of fear spikes through her, causing her spine to stiffen. Her unease made worse as her vision adjusts and she can make out that his nostrils are flared in blatant displeasure.

He's angry.

She's not even sure how she could've possibly missed his presence when she'd first entered the room. Heavy tendrils of burning magic filter off of his body in furious waves.

_Diffuse the situation, Bonnie, just let him know why you were gone for so long. _

"I-I got something for you."

She's not so sure when her throat had gotten so dry.

She moves almost robotically to grab the small bag on the bed, the once smooth paper suddenly feeling brittle and jagged in her hands. She doesn't take the simple black band out from its confines, instead she clears her throat, causing cerulean eyes to flit from the bag and back to her face.

"I was making you a daylight ring."

She knows that he already has one—a fact that she will gladly remain 'oblivious' to—and had assumed that much right after coming to the dispirited conclusion that Kai had most likely finished his vampiric transition.

When she had first made Caroline's ring, it had taken her _days, _but this was when she had been an inexperienced wichling. In reality, it had only taken her a few minutes on the car ride back to the hotel to spell this ring.

But that wasn't relevant, what mattered was that Kai _thought_ it had taken her all day to make this one.

Kai hasn't moved from his position sitting fastidiously on the desk chair, one of his fingers trailing absentmindedly on the rim of an empty glass sitting on top of the desk. His eyebrow is now quirked slightly at her explanation, but the hardened look still hasn't left his face.

"The thing is, Bon," he swipes a hand over his mouth and chuckles caustically to himself as he rises from his chair, "I just don't _believe _you."

Bonnie sucks in a breath then, suddenly feeling as if the walls are crumbling around her.

He's been relatively calm up until this point, and she's not sure why, but it annoys her.

He should've snapped long before she has.

Instead, he stalks towards her slowly and calmly, watching her expression carefully, as if waiting for _her _to explode.

"I'm _telling_ the truth," she grits out angrily, already feeling herself begin to lose control of her emotions.

She lets him step into her space to prevent him from thinking she's about to derail. Except now he's suddenly close enough that she can make out the lines of stubble sprinkling his jaw through the glowing darkness. His shoulders hunch in an attempt to sink to her eye-level. He towers over her, and it makes her feel extraordinarily disadvantaged.

The power imbalance only causes more anger to flood her.

_Be nice_, she thinks.

_Don't let him get to you. _

She tries to curb the scowl threatening to ruin her features.

"Hmm. Hmm," he hums to himself, gives a little nod and crinkles his brows, as if pretending to ponder and agree with her "truthful" statement.

He speaks again, the words slip meticulously from his lips.

"And uh—you didn't happen to run into anyone while you were out making this ring, right?"

She thinks about lying, then.

But she can see the way he's probingly searching her face, and she knows that it'd be no use.

_He knew I hadn't been alone_.

"I went to Whitmore to get my things," She glances over to her forgotten backpack on the floor, his gaze follow hers before stonily steadying back on her, "I saw Elena. I left to get the ring. That's it."

A smirk spreads languidly across his face as she speaks. And she knows it's not because he thinks that anything of what she's saying is comical, but because he knows that she's full of shit.

So she decides not to focus on that, and instead tries to reel her attention on _anything _else besides his obvious ability to see right through her. She settles on objectively studying the features of his face to distract herself from the inevitable storm, her gaze trailing over the lines of his nose, his eyes, and lips.

She hadn't noticed it before, but he's almost..._handsome_ in this moment.

Except that his handsomeness presents itself in a cruel way. He's all sharp features, pouty lips and piercing eyes, the mean smirk that splays across his face is second nature.

But the longer she reluctantly admires the shine of his eyes, the more her admiration sours; the constant glinting in them makes it seem as though he knows a horrible secret, and will refuse to divulge it without compensation.

She's reminded then, why back in '94, her fleeting attraction for him had vanished so quickly.

She knows better than anyone that those orphic gray eyes of his only promised horrible things and nothing else. Her primordial subconscious stubbornly refuses to acknowledge his new array of emotions. Not when he's so good at using his pretty face as a mask to obscure sinister intentions.

Which is why she can't help it; her eyes skitter to the door behind her, just to reassure herself.

He immediately catches it, and she stills.

The smirk slips off his face.

His mouth twists into a petulant glower, like he can just _taste_ her desperation to leave him.

And that was her first mistake, assuming for even a second that he would let her go.

He grabs at her before the thought of escape can flit through her head a second time.

The bag with his daylight ring drops flimsily from her grip, immediately forgotten on the carpeted floor.

A large hand encloses around her throat, the other clamping onto her arm in a bruising grasp, pushing her against the very door she had been clandestinely eyeing, and she can't help but find this all so very _familiar_.

"Don't lie to me!"

_This is __**not**_ _the deal we made. _

She wants to scream it at him just as viciously as he did her.

She feels justified in her anger, because she had never promised him her unrelenting honesty, not when his hand is still curled around her throat and his chest is crushed against hers.

She heard the stripped, raw anger in his voice as he yelled at her, and it's still familiar, but there's something different, a certain _hardness_ that hadn't been there before.

That's when she realizes just _how_ close he is.

Because it's not just the solid muscles of his chest she can feel against hers, it's _everything_ else.

She tries not to notice it, _begs_ her brain to think of anything besides the harrowingly thin cotton material of his pajama bottoms.

But her cheeks burn hotly and her throat dries because she can _feel _his appendage pressed directly into the soft skin stomach. She wants to squirm, and she feels almost nauseated at the horrible heat that's flared in the pit of her stomach. She goes to move out of his orbit just barely, but sucks in a sharp breath when she feels the warm skin slide imperceptibly down the steep bone of her pelvis.

And it's his fault, she thinks, as the heat crawls tantalizingly slow down to her fingertips. For not pressing his large fingers into her trachea hard enough, because this time around, though the anger streaking his face is the same, he's not frighteningly constricting all of the airflow from her windpipe like he had before. His grip is firm, steady and imposing, not as painful as it should be, and his thumb lightly grazes her pulse point in a way that elicits a reedy shiver. The worst part is, she doesn't even think he knows what he's doing to her. He has her suspended in a mix between feverish and terrified that the growing heat in her will continue to flood until it reaches between her legs.

But maybe it's not his fault.

Maybe it's her own fault, for thinking about his body like this, or maybe it's her fault for neglecting herself of intimacy for so long, for being so desperate to latch onto the first warm body that encases hers after being stuck in solitude.

It all happens in a matter of seconds, but it feels as though his body has been cruelly glued to hers like a second skin for hours.

She manages to tear her gaze away from the cajoling darkness of his eyes, and she _finally_ feels that horrible heat begin to ebb, her heart rate slows, and she thinks for a brief hopeful moment that she's overcome it, that she's overcome _him. _

But then he speaks again.

"Look at me."

Her eyes widen as she hears the coldness drenching his voice like poison.

Her fearful eyes dart straight back to his, and she can do nothing but submit to the biting discontempt piercing through her.

He slowly exhales, his jaw unhinges, his snake-like eyes stare at her, unblinking. The haughty breath causes his chest to bury into hers even more. He doesn't register the fierce turmoil she's experiencing, too lost in his own selfish need for revenge.

The air between them quivers with something blistering and impending.

Her heart continues to pound merclicely in her ears.

He looks like he's going to kill her.

And even _that_ isn't enough to stop the fervid heat from rushing straight to her core.

Her heart drops as she feels moisture gather in her underwear, and every neural network in her entire body becomes inflamed and _screeches _at her to leave; to leave before he notices.

She acknowledges that his lips have begun to move, and she thinks that he may be murmuring something to her, but she can barely hear him over the blood furiously rushing in her ears.

She _needs _to leave.

"I want you to look at me while I—"

—But it's too late.

She can _see_ the exact moment the scent of her arousal meets his nose.

She watches his once murderous expression transform in slow motion.

His face slackens, and his eyebrows raise in unbridled shock, leaving his face unguarded and undoubtedly incredulous.

Their eyes widen at the same time; hers in sheer panic, his in surprise.

Then, his face morphs.

His chin snaps upwards to close his mouth, his jaw clenches, his Adam's apple bobs heavily in his throat. His eyes slip shut, like he's savoring it, or like he's trying to control himself.

His hand unconsciously tightens around her esophagus, but his body wavers away from her, so that they're now a hair's width apart, and the dichotomy is almost _worse_.

When he opens his eyes to look at her again, they're molten black, and _dangerous_.

He looks at her like he's going to ruin her.

And like she's going to let him.

"Bonnie…"

His voice is strangled, but almost accusatory. Because he says it like he's already inside of her, as if he's already viciously pumping through her hot and slick core and hadn't expected her to be so _wet_.

It's all too much.

"Don't."

Her voice is a low growl, a clear warning.

It doesn't come out nearly as unwavering and powerful as she felt. But she burns her eyes threateningly into molten black holes. To let him know that if he makes another move, she will not hesitate to _burn_ him alive.

She realizes then, despite the knowledge that she will kill him if he so much as blinks wrong, just how much he frightens her.

And it's because she _can't_ draw a clear distinction between whether the biting darkness plaguing his expression is due to anger or arousal. He's looking at her like he wants nothing more than to end the incessancy of her existence, but also like he could swallow her whole.

Her chin wobbles briefly in a veiled attempt to swallow down an anxious whimper.

_Be nice._

_Be complicit._

But she can't.

Not when her blood is boiling and terror is swirling in her veins.

His face inches towards her, just barely. But his warm breath licks against her skin like flames.

And suddenly, the intent to rip and to bite and penetrate her body in the worst way blazes clear in his eyes.

Immediate alarm bells ring shrill in her head as she registers the defined features of his face slinking closer to hers.

The slap comes without warning.

They stare at each other, him now with an angry red mark smeared across his cheek, and her with an aching palm.

Both of their faces are twisted into ugly murderous scowls, daring the other to make another move.

Despite all the adrenaline pumping through her, she registers that his face is no longer suffocatingly close to hers. His hand had loosened in surprise by her sudden physical aggression.

And it's enough.

She slips from his grasp.

She doesn't know exactly how, but she does.

She makes it all the way to the bathroom, locking the door behind her, before sinking down to the ground.

She feels an ugly sort of sickness waver over her because she can _still_ feel the torrid phantom of his fingers branded into her neck, she can feel the murderous flickering in his eyes from her slap, but there was something else too, under all of the cold-blooded anger percolating towards her foolish action.

She knew that he had liked it.

Her hitting him in the face did nothing to stem his hunger, it had only fanned the fire.

And worse of all, she couldn't help the thrill of satisfaction that flashed through her the minute her hand made harsh contact with his cheek.

The sickness travels higher when she shifts her knees to place them under her and feels the cold damp fabric of her underwear skim just slightly against her bare clit.

She quickly waves her hand in a silencing spell, because she can feel the harrowing sob that's building in her throat even before her eyes have become wet with moisture.

The tears that leave her are hot and thick, they stream down her face in vicious trails and drip into the crease of her chest.

She feels like she's drowning in her own self-disgust, and she chokes on it as Liv and Jo's faces flash through her mind.

She thinks she deserves it—the burning shame piling onto torrents of disgust—for allowing her body to react to his in that way, for finding some sort of sick pleasure in his large hands pressing against her neck. From the same hands he's used to murder children, and his own family. The same hands he used to saw through the flesh of unborn babies.

The sickness rises until it leaves her mouth. She retches violently into the toilet.

.

.

He can't hear anything from the bathroom.

It's probably for the best.

He knows that she'll be in there for a while, if the abrupt crumbling of her expression before skittering away from him was anything to go by.

His chest heaves recklessly, he tries cannily to calm himself down and finds that he simply _can't. _

He had been _this _close to snapping.

He wasn't sure if it meant he'd been close to bashing her skull into the wall behind them, or plunging his fingers into her cunt. But his body had flooded with dark pleasure at the impending prospect of hearing desperate screams being ripped from her throat regardless of how they were elicited.

He had been ready to put an end to all of this, to all her _lies_; had her dainty neck lying placid and compliant in his grasp, and had wanted her to watch as he drained the light out of her eyes.

But then, the sweet musky scent of her arousal reached him, his vampiric senses had aggravated it so that it practically smothered the room, and he'd almost lost all control.

He'd just barely prevented his eyes from bleeding red, but he could feel his fangs begin to slide through his gums. He practically _ached_ to rip through any part of her sweet flesh he could find, wanting to start with sinking his teeth straight into her clit.

But he can't think like this, he can't afford to remember her intoxicating scent, because just that much nearly sent him teetering towards that sadistic void he knew he wouldn't be able to claw his way out of.

His jaw clenches in an attempt to reel in his dark thoughts, but when he thinks of the blush that colored her dusky cheeks, and the way her eyes had widened in shame while she just _dripped_ for him, his control slips far too easily.

Luke's consciousness is nowhere to be found as he dips a hand into the waistband of his pants.

It's nowhere to be found as he envisions the rage streaked across her pretty face while her hand smacks meanly against his cheek.

He lets out a groan.

His cock swells with hot blood.

Bonnie Bennett wasn't a mean person.

He grips his fully hard member in his hand and slowly begins to pump.

Bonnie didn't _get_ in physical fights with people.

His hips rock to thrust his cock into the welcomed warmth of hands harder.

_He_ did this to her.

He grips the shaft harder, until it _hurts_.

His spine crawls with chills as he thinks of the potency of her dark magic swirling and blistering the closer he had gotten towards her. He wonders if she'd rather choke him, like he did to her, strangle him with that same ferocity that she had slapped him with.

She thought she had everyone fooled.

But Bonnie Bennett had secrets and s_hames_.

He lets out another tortured groan.

His cheeks puff outwards, and his hand continues to move viciously and tightly against his own tender skin until his hips stutter and still.

He's left gasping for air, as if he'd just ran a marathon, his ab muscles twitching in tangent with each moan still stuttering from his lips.

When his undead heart finally doesn't feel like it's going to burst, he moves a shaky hand to run through the tendrils of his dampened hair.

He frowns to himself.

He doesn't quite like the feeling of his sticky semen coating the inside of his pajama pants, nor does he like the apparent guilt that's begun to fester in his stomach.

This is going to be a problem.

.

.

She comes out of the bathroom an hour later.

She reenters the room demurely; her head is down and her arms are crossed so she doesn't notice that Kai is wearing a different set of pajamas than when she'd left, or that his eyes are tracing the dried tear stains on her cheeks with his lips tilted downwards.

She certainly doesn't notice the fact that the paperbag with his daylight ring in it is missing.

He's sitting on the edge of the bed, and when she looks up, he's looking off into the distance, his eyes unfocused and his face blank. His lack of attention puts her at ease, allows her to get to what she'd wanted to talk to him about before things spiraled out of control.

She steps towards him, but makes sure to render a safe distance between them.

"Someone called me earlier," she pauses, remembering the phone call she had received on the ride over to the hotel, and tries to squash down a sharp breath when cobalt eyes suddenly snap to meet hers.

"He said they'd found a dead body with a severed head in Windbrook."

Her voice is quiet and reserved, but she regards him carefully, and she hates the fact that she can't read anything but the startling intensity of his eyes.

"Yeah? And who was this someone who called you?"

His expression remains relatively unchanging, but she can hear the jealousy trimming his words, and _still_ decides to say the name she knows he's grown a distaste for.

"It was Damon."

There's a pregnant pause as Kai looks away from her, his eyes glued back to that damn spot on the wall across from them, and she wants to say something about it, bring it to his attention, but she has a feeling that it would just start another whirlwind altercation.

"Were you with him today?"

His voice is suddenly quiet and meek, and he avoids her pressing stare.

Her forehead crinkles at his sudden change in tone, and she almost wants to scoff at how easily he can go from being demanding and belligerent one second and then act like a child scared of rejection the next. His erratic change in tone makes her entirely aware of an uneasiness that's been steadily layering the room since she first exited the bathroom.

"I saw Elena today when I got my things, and then I went to get your ring. I told you that before."

She cautiously avoids answering directly, not trusting her heart rate to not skip and stumble over the blaring silence.

She's tried to be calm up until this point to not press on the already fragile nature of their conversation, but can't stifle the nervous annoyance that surfaced through the tale-end of her explanation.

_Why_ can't he just believe her lies?

She doesn't tell him that Damon assumes that the dead body was courtesy of Jo or Liv potentially losing control of their new vampiric abilities and accidentally murdering a human in a haste to feed. Or that the others had assumed that this was Lily's doings, as she was a known Ripper.

Because she knew they were all wrong.

This was Kai's mess.

She didn't know exactly _how_ she knew this, but she just had an incredibly strong feeling...

He's still looking at her like he only _sort of _believes that she was with Elena and no one else, so she decides to deflect the conversation away from her and infringe it onto him.

"I know it was you who killed that man."

Her voice is firm, and righteously accusatory.

She thinks in that moment that he's going to lie to her and tell her that he didn't do it, can see the charming grin begin curving up the corner of his lips. But he quells the smile as soon as it begins and tilts his head to look at her, his jaw clenching and his gaze turning serious instead.

"Sorry."

She's surprised at how easily the admittance slips out of his lips, and a bit _more _surprised over the fact that he apologized, but she wipes the shock off her face before he can catch it.

She speaks very slowly instead, her fingers rubbing lightly against the tender welt forming on her forearm from his earlier treatment.

"If..._this _is going to work, you can't feed on humans. Only animals from now on."

She's not sure exactly what _this _is, but she's fairly certain that at some point, they'll have to outline the exact nature of their relationship more succinctly for the sake of her own sanity, and to prevent what had happened earlier from _ever_ happening again.

Her mind drifts to Stefan and his Ripper tendencies. And if Kai is anything like Stefan, then an animal diet is the safest way.

And up until this point, she's honestly not sure how he's done so well in preventing himself from gnawing into _her_, but she doesn't want to find out.

Kai merely scoffs in annoyance at her proposal, like _she_ was the one who just left a decapitated body in the middle of the road in plain sight.

"That's a bit...unrealistic don't you think?

She wants to say that their whole situation is unrealistic, but bites her tongue.

Instead she compromises, wondering why apprehension seeps into her skin the more she watches him process her suggestion.

"Blood bags then. And blood bags _only. _You agree to this and...the next time I leave, I'll _tell_ you when and where I'm going."

The smile that he had dampened earlier creeps back onto his face, his shoulders relax, as if a calmness has wavered through him. Meanwhile, the apprehension only moves more sluggishly through her own body.

She'd almost find his soft smile endearing, if she weren't in her right mind.

"Deal."

He holds out a large ringed hand and she stares at it for a moment.

He's asking her to show a sign of faith and shake the same hand that's been used to puncture a hunting knife into her own stomach. The same hand that had gently stroked the throbbing vein on the side of her neck just moments ago.

But this was an offering, a momentary armistice, and she'd be foolish not to take it.

She swallows briefly, warily eyeing his flat palm once more before allowing her smaller hand to be enveloped by his.

His hand is warm; soft yet worn with use. His many rings press cooly into her skin, and it's not an unwelcome feeling.

This is probably the first time she has ever _willingly _touched him, not out of malice or threat, or from a need to escape.

She's not sure what to think.

And just when she thinks he's been holding her palm hostage in his for a beat too long, their eyes meet and her chest swells in a sharp inhale.

He stares at her intently, there's a certain delicate emotion that flickers onto his face, but his eyes quickly settle back into their familiar darkness.

She watches cautiously as his pupils continue to bleed over the gray of his irses. It happens gradually until they're almost _too_ similar to how he had looked at her before she had run off to the bathroom. Her heart rate spikes—both in recollection and in barely concealed panic—and she hastily pulls her hand away before she can watch him spiral into that darkness completely.

She clears her throat, looking anywhere but him, and misses the devilish grin that creeps up his face as his pupils resize.

When they go to bed this time, she makes sure that a single pillow separates their bodices.

.

.

He waits for her breathing to even out before rising and grabbing her daylight ring off the desk.

He crumples the paper bag and drops it into the trash can, twirling the simple black band on his thumb as he crosses over to the armoire in the closet.

He can feel the faint Bennett magic humming against the skin of his fingertips and smiles softly to himself as an unholy idea crowns.

He places the ring gently into the small wooden box sitting on top of the armoire. The box was a betrothal gift from the Gemini coven, back when his parents had first gotten married. He had found it while secretly snooping in the attic of his old home in Portland, looking for any valuable Gemini relics as their newly minted leader.

He'd never had any use for that box until tonight.

He turns back towards the sleeping form on the expensive hotel mattress and briefly pauses his descent.

He allows himself to watch her, just for a moment.

But then he can't stop his gaze from turning greedy as it races over her, burning the features of her tranquil face into his memory. He ultimately forces himself to look away, and focuses on the constant beat of her heart instead.

Her silent breathing calms him, in a way.

Because she's alive. She's still here.

He no longer cares as much about uncovering the conserved secrecy regarding her friends.

Because he's discovered something more valuable; a tantalizing something that she had never meant for him to discover.

His lips curl into another grin.

He turns back to the armoire and uses a single finger to delicately trace the golden embroidery on the Gemini box before absentmindedly tracing the silver band of his own daylight ring resting snugly on his thumb.

Bonnie doesn't know it yet, but she's already made his job _that_ much easier for him.

.

.

"You don't understand just how hard it was for me to get this, do you, love?"

A gravely accented voice breaks through the bustling noise of the bar.

Lily Salvatore brushes auburn hair over her shoulder, places her glass down on the table top before zeroing in on Lorenzo's form sliding onto the bar stool next to her.

He grabs a slightly crumpled brown paper bag out from under the lapel of his peacoat, and places it onto the bar table directly in front of Lily.

She doesn't immediately grab at the bag, not like she wants to. And she doesn't need to look inside to know that he's been a good little accomplice and gotten what she's asked for.

Instead, she gives Enzo a sweet smile, reaches towards him to smooth the black collar of his jacket down onto broad shoulders before speaking to him in an even sweeter tone.

"It couldn't have been that hard. I mean, you've retrieved it haven't you?"

And maybe it's the way she says things with such politeness, or the way her voice sings so warmly, but Enzo can't bring himself to be offended by her rather rude rebuttal.

Lily gently places the crumpled bag into her purse, Enzo raises a single finger to alert the waiter that he wants to order a drink.

And since she's feeling rather..._grateful_ towards Enzo at the moment, she decides that she may just indulge in him and stay until after he's finished his drink.

"So, what are you going to do with it?"

She misses the way his honeyed eyes soften as they travel from her purse up to her face.

Lily chooses not to answer him directly, though thoughts of her dear Julian flit through her brain.

"All will be clear soon."

The phoenix stone sits heavy at the bottom of her purse.


	4. Do Not Go Gentle

**Do Not Go Gentle**

* * *

The next few days are...disheartening.

News about the ascendant comes in the form of a single text from Stefan late at night. She's alerted by the abrupt flashing luminance of her phone screen piercing through the pitch black darkness of the room.

She remembers having to twist her body gingerly and at a slightly awkward angle in order to reach the phone on the nightstand. She had only glanced at the message for a second, her body remaining frigid and still so that the loury figure mere inches away from her would not be inclined to wake.

The ascendant wasn't there.

It hadn't been at the wedding hall like they had expected it to be.

She remembers sinking back stonily into the mattress and the rest of her semblance sinking with her.

This isn't the only news she receives that week.

Jo and Liv are still adjusting to their newfound vampirism, Liv doing surprisingly well, according to Tyler. In the days following, Tyler had decided that he and Liv wanted to leave Mystic Falls, start a new life in New York, or the like.

But before Tyler and Liv settled in, Tyler had promised Damon that they would visit the Gemini compound in Portland to see if the ascendant had somehow ended up there. It's a long shot, but they don't have any other leads, and Liv and Jo are the last living Gemini coven members that have access to the compound to begin with.

Jo has been...struggling.

There had always been a brief possibility that Jo's twins had somehow survived due to the revitalizing nature of the vampire blood coursing through her system.

But they hadn't, and Jo has been distraught ever since, made worse due to her heightened emotions.

Her and Alaric have been getting into a lot of fights lately, and Alaric has told Damon—who of course told Bonnie—that she's gotten into the habit of excessively splurging on blood bags.

Which poses the possibility that Jo may also be a Ripper.

And normally, Bonnie would have qualms about letting a very human Ric live alone with a Ripper, but he's reassured everyone that he is more than prepared in the slim chance that Jo ever does attack him. And Bonnie trusts a seasoned vampire hunter to hold his own.

As of recently, Jo and Alaric decided to join Liv and Tyler in Portland to visit Jo's old home for a few weeks, maybe to get away from all the Mystic Falls drama for a while. She doesn't blame them.

Sometimes, Bonnie finds herself wishing she had gone with them.

The only remotely good change that'd happened in the past week was when Kai decided that their hotel room was far too "cramped" for a mega powerful leader.

Kai has since compelled Bonnie and him into one of the deluxe suites in the hotel—which is an absolutely egregious upgrade in Bonnie's opinion. There's an extra living room with a couch and coffee table, two seperate bathrooms, a kitchen, and far too much space for only two people. Funnily enough, there is still only one bed, though king sized, this time.

She didn't have it in her to ask him if they could just move into her father's, or her Gram's empty house.

And she doesn't have it in her to ask why they're living together in the first place.

She's simply accepted the glaring shift in her life. If this forced domesticality is what it'll take to prevent Kai from blazing a destructive path of revenge on herself and on Mystic Falls, then she will gladly comply.

And if she ignores the very blatant precariousness of their relationship, it hasn't been all that bad.

Her days typically go like this now: she's awakened by the summer heat peaking through the blinds. Her eyes adjust to the light circulating around her to settle on the figure next to her, who's already awake. She knows by now not to startle at the sight of cerulean eyes trailing over her stirring form.

Because no matter what, he _always_ manages to wake before she does. And she's almost become okay with the consequent ungardedness that this brings her.

And although it's usually _impossible _to get him to shut up, in the early hours of morning, he's typically silent. There's always a moment once she rouses when a very deliberate quietness blankets them. She knows that it's only there to mollify any potential altercations.

Sometimes, in the center of those moments, she'll notice his gaze drop to the curve of her neck, and so she'll quietly study him while he studies the carotid artery that pulses under the surface of her skin.

Through her studying, she's deduced the fact that that lingering habit of his has become increasingly more consistent as the days go on, and yet, she has _never _once seen his fangs.

She's long since scrapped the idea that he's a Ripper—he actually exhibits a sort of eerily unremitting sense of self control.

He drinks his blood like a human, often opting to microwave blood bags and then pour them into a blue Whitmore Hospital mug that had seemingly appeared out of nowhere, and periodically takes small sips from it in the morning like it's a cup of coffee. The veins on his face don't crawl murkily under his eyes, and his features never mutate into nightmarish proportions. And she doesn't think he's doing it for her own comfort. She has a theory that he's feigning normalcy for the sake of his own sanity.

The other, more _pressing_ habit that she's noticed him taking a liking to, is touching her.

He usually does it in the mornings, in the depths of the quietness they've so meticulously placed around themselves as a standardization for how they _should _be acting around each other. It's because he knows that he can get away with it then, when she's too busy trying to preserve the silent neutrality, and her brain is still cloudy from waking up.

He'll usually brush a strand of hair from her face, and even though she can _always_ see it coming from the disgustingly docile look that crosses his face, she still has to bite harshly on her lower lip to keep from lurching away from his touch. Because even in their armistice, his touch is a constant reminder of his vile capabilities, capabilities that she had once allowed to warm her insides.

She's been getting better though.

She's slowly dredging herself into the habit of reminding herself that he can touch her and it doesn't have to lead to anything inherently disturbing. Because as much as she wants to contribute his inherent touchiness off of her own disposition, she knows that it's more than that.

Kai Parker is a siphoner first and foremost—he _fiends_ for contact.

And as she's discovered over the past few days, he finds comfort in intimacy.

Human touch keeps him placated in a way she hadn't known he could be, which is basically the only reason she allows him to touch her in the first place. His behavior almost makes her wonder how different he could've been if he'd received the same human contact while growing up.

And she thinks that deep down, she craves it too. After being isolated for so long, it's nice to feel a warm hand tracing its reassuring presence on her skin, no matter who those hands belonged to.

But as much as she finds a shallowly deceptive comfort in this form of intimacy, sometimes, she wants to scream at him.

It's because he allows his expression to become too unguarded around her when he's providing said intimacy. Because not only does he brush the tendrils of hair from her skin, but his eyes trail delicately and forlornly across the features of her face when he does.

She can far too clearly see his bleeding heart flayed out bare and vulnerable on his sleeve, and it does nothing but fill her with a dark desire to break it. It would be so effortless and simple, obliterating every last trace of his affections for her.

It's not as if she can help the cruel thoughts that fill her, or the way her insides sometimes still flare with anger when his fingers drag across her in a particularly careful manner. She simply _can't_ prevent herself from despising the fact that he has the _audacity_ to crave her closeness after everything he's put her through.

But as much as she so deeply wants to reject every semblance of his propensities, she can't, because that means compromising everything that she has been desperately trying to protect.

So she plays the caricature of herself, the one who bites her tongue and doesn't say anything when his open gaze lingers on her for too long, or when his arm just so happens to drape itself over her waist before they drift off to sleep.

She hasn't broken thus far, not even when the arm lying curled around her form starts to feel more and more like a boa constrictor coddling its meal before it bites into warm flesh.

Because she remembers what it was like, the last time she had broken. When she had allowed his fingers to brush against her throat and coax a dizzying heat to spread through her core.

She won't let it happen again.

And so she forces herself to get over it, forget her past mistakes, and continue pushing through, like she's always done.

Because her days go like this now, and she'll do well to accept that.

.

.

They've unknowingly created a routine.

They both leave the hotel room around the same time, and they return around the same time.

When he'd asked for her phone number on their second morning together, she could tell by the way the words had tumbled from his lips that he had been deliberating over ways to ask her for a while. She didn't want to give it to him at first, but now that she has, she's figured out a way to use this to her advantage, or at least she _tries_ to.

There's a such thing as GPS tracking available in cellphones, and she uses this mainly to deduce what time he's going to be returning to the hotel. She's lucky enough that he's not exactly up to date on the latest tech inventions of the 21st century, or he'd probably be using it on her.

He knows now that every time she leaves, she's been meeting with her friends, just like how she knows that he's been meeting with the Heretics.

But when they return, they try to keep their conversations light and virtually unmitigated. This works against Bonnie's favor because it means that she has no leads on what the Heretics are planning. However, it also means that Kai remains in the dark on what _she's_ been planning.

Despite the fact that most of their conversations are void of substance and consist of tiptoeing around blatant subjects, they still argue over almost everything. It is near _impossible_ for Bonnie to maintain an amicable conversation with him, and almost far too easy to slip into the barbed verbal tête-à-tête that they're so used to.

Luckily for Bonnie, Kai Parker is the type of person who can hold a conversation with a brick wall.

He talks _constantly_, and although it's obnoxious, she often finds herself grateful that she isn't being held responsible for filling any silences, especially when she uses those moments to secretly think about ways to gouge those annoyingly animated eyes out of his skull.

She's learned from previous experience that he can remain chipper and amicable for long periods of time, but that it also takes very little to dwindle his mood.

His face shutters any time she mentions her friends. He's explained himself once before, it apparently pisses him off that they use witches with little regard for their well-being. She knows that his use of the term "witches" correlates directly to her. She doesn't point out his blatant hypocrisy.

She's been used by _everyone_.

But even still, on the outchance that they do leave the hotel together, they avoid places like the Grille and Whitmore College like the plague.

He cooks. Mostly. And she pretends that his food isn't Michelin Star quality.

She's never once told him which foods she likes or dislikes, and it's moments like these where she has to swallow down unease once she realizes that he may know her preferences from the 4 months he spent lurking in the background of her and Damon's 1994 prison world excursion.

She doesn't allow herself to wonder what else he'd learned about her while there.

The first night he had cooked for her had been the worst.

That entire day had been an inevitable bump in their already skewered road to acquaintanceship that they'd been unnaturally forming.

It was directly one day after the event she would rather leave _forgotten_ in their collective memories, the one where she'd had to empty the contents of her stomach while shamefully kneeling on the cool tiled floor of the bathroom.

Her anxiety had peaked in the form of the parallel she had drawn between the present dinner, and the dinner he had prepared for her before he'd carved his twin's hunting knife into her stomach. He'd quickly become aggravated at her refusal to eat the food he made, and she'd quickly become aggravated over the fact that he thought that she would possibly be okay with eating it.

She hadn't ended up eating that night, but Kai had decided to busy himself in figuring out how to work the DVR system on the flat screen, and had chosen to start a movie instead.

They don't typically watch movies all too frequently, but when they do, she usually chooses them (save for the first time), and in doing so unknowingly updates him on the important pop culture cinema that he'd missed out on.

He mostly talks through them—she stays silent the entire time.

And on that first night, when Kevin Costner's face appeared in the opening scene of _The Bodyguard, _she'd spent the entire movie _silently_ feeling sick to her stomach.

.

.

Her hair's getting longer.

Although it's only been a few days since he'd whisked her away from the wedding hall, it now flows in wavy strands down to her shoulders. It's matured length matches the prescient look in her eye.

It suits her, he thinks.

And when he brushes away a particularly long wispy strand that'd curled around her chin that morning, he's so focused on the pretty way in which her new length frames her heart-shaped face, that he _almost_ doesn't notice the eruption of goosebumps trailing down the side of her neck.

She's still frightened by him, he notes.

But he knows now that it's in a different way.

Because no matter what she wants to think of him, she cannot prevent her body's visceral and natural reaction to him.

This is a fact that he is now _oh so very_ hyper-aware of.

But he decides out of the kindness of his own heart not to torture her further and instead drops his gaze and softly smiles to himself before lowering his hand.

They still don't talk about that night.

And though he wants to, he doesn't bring it up himself.

It's because he can see the excuse teetering on the tip of her tongue, waiting to spill out. And also because he kind of likes watching the slightly panicked look that flickers onto her face in those moments when she thinks he's going to mention it.

He's doing himself a favor really, saving himself the eye roll, and the impending exasperation. Besides, any excuse she could possibly come up with would be no use—she's already exposed herself.

So he doesn't say anything, maybe because he wants her to fester and slave over her denial of what her body wants. He doesn't need to be her undoing in that sense, not when she'll eventually cause that unravelment herself.

Because before she had so blatantly given herself away, he hadn't been even remotely cognizant of her reluctant attraction to him. But rather entirely aware of an electric atmosphere that crackled and flared every time they were near each other.

But he'll ignore this for the time being, in favor of playing the long game.

His first and foremost priority is trying to be _nicer _to her, starting with being less demanding and curious as to what she's doing with her friends. He's really more of a night owl, because of the whole undead thing, but he forces himself to wake before she does each morning. Forces himself to be tender and cutesy and placid so that it's the first thing about him that she acknowledges when she wakes. He's perfectly mastered the art of constructing his expression into that of a love-sick puppy every time she catches him staring at her, so that she won't feel as threatened by his presence.

Sometimes though, the affection and admiration smoothening his features feels a little too real, and not enough like the surface level imitation he'd become so used to dredging up during his free-range sociopathic days.

He is not worried about those moments where he finds himself drifting between pretending to be enraptured with her every move, to actually admiring the way the honeyed light catches in her green irises. He's not worried because he knows that despite her perceptiveness, she's too frightened and anxious over his rapt attention to bring herself to truly focus on it uninterrupted.

She doesn't notice when he floats between his pseudo expressions and reality because she's too busy trying to subtly move herself out of his eye-line.

So when she clears her throat that morning and inquires his name in a breathy voice that's just shy of timid, he taps up the vulnerable look he had been giving her just then, but only a bit.

She's not looking at him when she speaks, her fingers nervously trail the bedding, and he unabashedly stares as a light pink tongue darts out to lick plump lips. He knows what she's going to say before she says it, but he kind of wants to bask in her blatant nervousness a little while longer.

It's cute.

"I don't want you to get the wrong idea about..._us_."

Her eyes finally travel to meet his, a surprising determination burns through the anxiousness that had been there. Her lips part, as if in preparation of a rebuttal.

He stares right back at her, and despite correctly predicting her words, a maniac laugh threatens to burst from his lungs almost immediately after they are processed.

He wants to tell her that he's already _gotten_ the wrong idea about them, and that it's her fault. And to let her know that at this point, it's no longer a matter of how he is going to gain her trust and devotion to him, but _when_.

He doesn't bother trying to prevent his eyes from glinting impishly as his mouth contradictorily moves to form the responsible words he knows she wants to hear.

He chooses his next words wisely, and _good naturedly_.

"Wouldn't dream of it, Bonster."

.

.

He's still thinking about her even when he stops at the huge double doors of the Heretic mansion on Sansom street.

The Heretics are already in deep conversation by the time he unceremoniously pulls one of those frilly wooden chairs from under the decorative tea table to plop down on. Lily Salvatore's standing at the front of the living room with her hands on her hips and her forehead scrunched with worry lines like she's been tasked with commanding the stern of a ship.

The last time that he'd been in the midst of pretending to listen to Lily complain about Enzo's supposedly "suspicious" behavior, Valarie had shoved him a crumpled piece of paper with two names on it.

The names in question were Mary Alice and Astrid Malchance.

He hadn't gotten the opportunity to ask her about their significance the last time he'd had to listen to Lily Salvatore harp away about some phoenix stone, so he figures he may have better luck this time.

Especially when considering Kai's plans of frustrating Lily to the point of exit by doing what he does best: making unhelpful comments asking nonsensical questions.

He knows he's done his job correctly after interrupting her for the umpteenth time and seeing that she has to physically bite her tongue—most likely to prevent herself from voicing her desire to rip his own tongue from his mouth.

He waits until Lily irately turns on her heels and out of the room, muttering something about checking on a "Julian's" coffin, whatever _that's_ about.

Malcom is next to leave, and then Beau, Kai chooses to ignore the dirty looks that are tossed his way when they do.

Nora grabs Mary-Louise by the hand and stands before turning to Kai, regarding the peaceful look on his face with appropriate disdain.

"You really are annoying, you know."

He merely gives her one of those mocking 'who me?' looks, and lets a smile split his face when she scoffs and turns away, dragging her petulant blonde girlfriend along with her.

Valarie attempts to slip out the living room along with them, but Kai's standing and rushing to block her path before she gets the chance.

"Ah ah ah," He tuts, causing Valarie to halt with her arms folded and her brow to quirk upwards.

"I believe that _you_ owe me an explanation…" His face contorts to an expression of fake offense, "If I didn't know any better I would've thought that you were avoiding me—"

She rolls her eyes before sighing at his antics, as if she's already bored with the conversation.

"Well I'm not. What do you want to know?"

Kai grins. He's always preferred Valarie out of all of the Heretics.

His smile drops as he edges closer into her line of sight.

"The names. Who are they?"

He knew for certain after she had given him that crumpled piece of paper that this was his lead to finding the siphoning curses he'd questioned her about earlier, but he just needed her to weed out the details.

Valarie's cobalt eyes dart around briefly, no doubt to make sure none of the others are listening in. He doesn't tell her that she shouldn't bother—he doesn't exactly care if the other Heretics hear what they're up to, they're too busy worrying about themselves to concern themselves with analyzing his endeavours anyways.

"They're witches. Part of the French Quarter coven to be exact."

Kai very vaguely remembers learning about French Quarter witches as a child, and how they partook in some freaky Harvest Ritual. Maybe not as freaky as his own coven's twin ritual.

Normal coven things.

Valarie lets out a haughty snort of air from her nostrils when he does nothing but stare at her expectantly, more than slightly unimpressed with this bit of information.

"They're not alive anymore. But they were a pretty big deal in the early 20th century. They specialized in...a _different_ sort of dark magic. Their spells were derivative of Arabian dialects instead of Latin, and the witches were most infamously involved with the Original, Kol Mikaelson. I assume you know of him."

She doesn't wait this time for the information to sink in before continuing.

"They used their magic to spell objects, turn them into dark contraptions and talismans. But they're not exactly like the normal magical objects you're familiar with. From what I remember, these objects were capable of sucking and absorbing magic from virtually anything, which was why Kol Mikaealson was so interested in them. He wanted them to spell a white Oak Stake to kill his brother, the hybrid Klaus. Suck all the supernatural magic out of him like a siphon."

Well this was new, _valuable_ information. A bunch of French Quarter witches creating siphoning contraptions, with Arabian dark magic no less? How did _that_ story get swept under the rug?

_Just like how the existence of the 1903 prison world was_, a tiny voice in his head pipes up.

"These witches. Were they by any chance involved with—"

"—The Gemini coven? Yeah, they were. French Quarter witches used to be heavily involved with us. We were the two biggest witch covens residing in North America, believe it or not. The Gemini's actually didn't take too kindly to Mary and Astrid, though. Rumor has it they helped create a sort of—"

"—Prison world", he finishes for her, his face now set into a grim line.

"It wasn't one exactly, there weren't enough Gemini's in NOLA at that point. But one of our witches sided with Klaus and helped him trap them in some mansion, along with a bunch of other witches who've pissed him off."

"Were you one of them?"

He couldn't help himself. He was genuinely intrigued by the answer, and especially with how exactly she knew all of this information in the first place.

Valarie's lips part briefly, as if she's on the verge of saying something, but chooses not to answer at the last moment. Kai supposes it's for the best that he doesn't know any more than he should. Petty attachments and all that.

"The point _is_, Astrid and Mary Alice supposedly _died_ with their Grimoires with them in that mansion. And because people tend to avoid that place like the plague—dead witches and such—those spell books are likely sitting there untouched," Valarie studies his face, but he makes sure to keep his expression blank and unmoved as she reopens her mouth to voice what he's thinking, "And if you got your hands on those Grimoires, you get your siphoning curse. Or at least as close to one as you can get."

"Are we sure the Grimoires are still there? I mean, why wouldn't a bunch of witches not know how to get out of a spelled prison?"

Valarie shrugs, but doesn't meet his probing eyes, so he tries the other question that was resting on the tip of his tongue.

"Do you happen to know where this mansion is exactly? Or a name, or even a street I could go off of?"

"No idea," and the careless way she says it after dumping that immense load of information on him, kind of makes Kai want to strangle her, but he keeps his jaw set, "But I'm sure if you asked around in New Orleans, or happened to run into any Originals, they'd be happy to tell you."

It's now his turn to let out a snort, and as he shakes his head, his legs move towards the door on their own accord. All of this new information is making him feel a bit stir crazy, and he wants to leave before he's inclined to ask for more.

He pauses though, just under the door archway when he hears her soft voice peak over his rampant thoughts.

"Why are you so interested in knowing about all of this anyways? I know it's not out of mere curiosity for our coven's history."

She's perceptive, he'll give her that.

He settles his eyes squarely on her face, deciding to let his transparency be known.

"Do you really care?"

She regards him briefly, and he can feel her sizing him up, the settled look on her face telling him that she's come to her conclusion about him. What that was, he didn't care to ask.

"'Suppose not."

Valarie was definitely his favorite Heretic.

.

.

"We need to slow them down."

Bonnie watches as Stefan surveys the rest of the room with lips slightly downturned, and green eyes hardened with resolve.

"Lily's been getting suspicious, and now they know about the missing ascendant."

Stefan had spent the afternoon debriefing them on the lovely conversation he'd had with his mother, who had apparently spent the majority of it passively aggressively hinting at knowing of their plans to find a novel Gemini ascendant.

All eyes turn to Damon at Stefan's admittance, who sits nestled between Bonnie and Elena on the couch.

He has the nerve to look indignant.

"Why are you all looking at me?"

"Are you going to pretend like we didn't all see you acting all buddy-buddy with Enzo at Matt's deputy initiation ceremony this morning?

Caroline steps closer towards Damon from her spot besides Stefan, her eye-brow arched in challenge.

"We weren't all 'buddy-buddy', we barely even said two words to each other."

Damon rises to stand as well, his fingers coming to circle around a glass of bourbon on the throw table in front of them, while Bonnie feels an impending headache forming from the affronted tone lacing through Damon's response.

"Really? Did those two words happen to be 'new' and 'ascendant'?"

"Look, Blondie—"

Stefan steps in between them, reaching out a hand to stop Damon's advances.

"—We don't have time for this, Damon. Did you, or did you not talk to Enzo about the possibility of there being a new ascendant? Because before today, the Heretics weren't even aware that there was one."

The room falls silent again, and Bonnie finds herself watching Matt use his finger to trace the pattern of the couch cushion across from her.

"Okay, alright, just for the record though, I didn't _say_ anything to Enzo. He asked _me_ if I knew where it was. How he found out about it to begin with? The guy has a habit of lurking around the boarding house, he probably overheard one of our _many_ conversations about it."

He downs the rest of his glass of bourbon, ignoring Elena's worried gaze settled on him.

"Damon—"

"—Besides, this is a good thing. We now know that Enzo doesn't know anything about where it could possibly be. Which means we have a leg up on them. We just have to wait for Liv to give us more info from 'you know where'. And so what if Enzo told Lily about the ascendant, _Enzo_ isn't who we should be worrying about."

"Did Enzo say that? About not knowing where the ascendant was, that is. And you trust him?"

It's Bonnie's voice that floats from behind Damon's standing form, suspicion bleeding clearly through her words.

Why should they trust anything that Enzo says? _Especially _with his history of screwing them over. For all she knew, Enzo _did_ know where the ascendant was.

Damon shrugs, and the nonchalantness of the gesture only slightly makes Bonnie want to give him an aneurysm.

"He mentioned that the Heretics are planning something. Something big. Said something about a stone."

"A stone?"

Stefan's eyes snap suddenly to Damon, as if he's heard something familiar, and Bonnie watches the exchange curiously. Damon waves him off, though.

"I didn't get all the details. I was...interrupted."

Caroline chews on her thumb contemplatively, absorbing Damon's words before settling on a decision.

"Okay well we can't let them gain any more traction. We need to slow them down like Stefan said," she turns to said vampire,"Where did you say they were staying again?"

"I didn't. But I remember Lily saying that Kai had cloaked an abandoned warehouse on the night of the wedding—"

"—He didn't. Cloak a warehouse, I mean," all eyes zero in on Bonnie, who's glad that finally all of that time she's been spending with Kai Parker talking about absolutely nothing of consequence has actually become useful.

"It was a mansion, number 704 on Sansom street."

She waves her phone when she receives a few questioning stares.

"GPS tracker", she finishes in explanation.

"Maybe…" Bonnie can practically see the idea stringing itself together in Matt's head, his eyebrows crinkling as he rubs a hand over the growing stubble on his chin.

"Maybe we don't have to just slow them down, maybe we can stop them altogether. _Maybe_ we wouldn't need the ascendant at all."

Bonnie doesn't mean for the overwhelming surge of doubtfulness to creep in at his words, but it does, and she can tell just from glancing at the vampire out of her periphery that Damon feels skeptical too.

She stops listening once Caroline questions Matt about his so-called alternative option.

She feels unbearably anxious about it all. It seems as though they've been doing the same thing everyday since the wedding; simply _talking_ about what to do with the Heretics and never following through with any sort of action.

This is what Bonnie's used to, it was her prefered method of attack, but now she's just finding herself being tired of it all. She just wants the Heretics problem over and done with, and more specifically she wants _Kai Parker_, to be over and done with. Because if she's being honest, being around Kai Parker is exhausting in and of itself.

She's not entirely keen on waiting for Matt and Caroline to come up with some other idea to potentially get them all killed.

If they want to knock the Heretics off their scent, they'll have to act fast, use the element of surprise.

She doesn't voice her opinion on the matter until she's in the sanctity of Damon's bedroom.

She stands with her back leaning against the hard wood of the door, while the vampire sits with his jean-clad legs dangling off the bed. His large hands run themselves over his face, maybe in an attempt to smooth out the exhaustion lines forming.

"I'm sick of it, Damon. I'm sick of waiting around, waiting for them to make a move. I'm tired of all the planning. Because realistically speaking, when have _any_ of our plans actually worked? We should do something _now, _before they end up taking over our town."

Damon immediately stills at Bonnie's words, his face lifts to peer at her with those translucent eyes of his. When he realizes that she's being serious, it's like a sort of tension seeps out of Damon's body, his shoulders relax and his plump lips quirk in pleasant surprise.

"Why, that may just be the best suggestion you've made all day, Bon Bon."

His eyebrows waggle crazily on his face, and when his mouth splits into a familiar devilish grin, she finds her lips curving to grin along with him.

"What's say you and me go kill us some Heretics."

.

.

She's not exactly sure how Damon spots Malcolm. But she supposes he has a sort of penchant for finding trouble.

They're in the back of some parking lot, she's not exactly sure where as it's a little too dark out to make out her exact whereabouts, though she can see enough to make out a few trash bins and a man in a handsome black suit.

They find him in the middle of feeding on an innocent, his back hunched in a pristine suit with bloody fingers and curling and digging into his victim's flesh.

The Heretic senses her presence almost immediately, choosing to drop the body he'd been feasting on before whipping around to focus bloody, soulless eyes on her.

"And who are you?"

Blood drips in perfect streams down his chin, his eyes look hungry and bare as they trail over the slopes of her naked shoulders in her white tube top. She attributes the prickling shiver that travels down her spine to the summer wind.

Her eyes flicker briefly to the dead body lying limp to the left of Malcom's feet.

She's going to enjoy getting rid of this one.

She offers a sort of off handed shrug in response, the corner of her mouth twitches upwards, but just barely.

"Town Witch."

.

.

He had actually been wondering when Lily would decide to try to exploit him.

He's honestly just surprised it took her this long to find another use for him, what with her _many_ plans for the quaint town of Mystic Falls.

When he got the phone call from her earlier in the day asking to meet up at some seedy bar, he'd honestly thought that it was some sort of come on.

He had even been thoroughly prepared to dismantle any and all possible sexual advances from the older vampire, were she to try.

But as it turned out, what she really wanted from him was actually much worse.

Lily had heard through the grapevine that her son and his friends had a lead on where the ascendant from the wedding hall was.

Which was where _he_ came in.

"So let me get this straight. You want _me_ to get information from _Bonnie_ about the missing ascendant?"

He honestly hadn't even thought of that thing since the night of the wedding, and now that he's thinking about it, he _still_ wants nothing to do with it.

Let it stay missing for all he cares.

He supposes he should be more frightened of the aspect of being put into another prison world, but finds himself unable to conjure even a modicum of concern.

Maybe it's because he knows that by the time Bonnie and her friends even find the ascendant, she'll be putty in his hands. He's confident in his prowess to ruin any and all motivation she has to trap him anywhere. And besides, he couldn't care less if the rest of the Heretics are imprisoned, just that _he_ himself is not included in that ordeal.

And if worse comes to worse, and on the _slightly_ more probable chance that she does try to screw him over, he's pretty sure he can take her.

He realizes only somewhat late through his internal monologuing, that Lily is still waiting expectantly for an answer.

Talk to Bonnie about the whereabouts of a device used to entrap him? As if.

"She'd never buy it. I can't just casually work it into a conversation. It'll ruin our little thing we have going," He intentionally ignores the soured look that's begun to twist Lily Salvatore's face as he twirls the little pink umbrella sticking out of his martini glass. "We don't talk about anything supernatural related, especially not those regarding ascendants, or the '_v' word_ for that matter. Both are _big_ no no's."

Lily looks exasperated by the time Kai reaches the end of his explanation, and he can honestly say he doesn't blame her.

"What is it that you two possibly talk about if not related to vampires?"

Kai splutters a bit indignantly at that.

"I-I don't know? The weather? Kevin Costner? Why that song by Carly Rae Jepsen is so popular?"

What _don't_ they talk about, should be the question. They talk about a lot of things.

Well at least, _he_ does.

He thinks it's nice, in a way, not having to focus on the supernatural for once.

It allows him to focus on more important things, like _her_.

Lily and him end up spending a bit more time at the bar, Lily continuing her attempt in convincing Kai to talk to Bonnie, to which he finally decides to agree to, coincidentally after finishing his third apple martini.

He finally leaves the bar after reassuring Lily one last time that he'll try to coax information out of Bonnie, full well knowing that he will do no such thing.

He was serious about not messing up their little _thing _they've got going.

He doesn't realize how close he is to the boarding house until he's rounding a corner and finds himself on the street next to the Grille backlot.

He doesn't need his eyes to adjust to the darkness to see the outline of three figures poised for battle in the middle of the barren street.

But he feels it. Feels _her_ magic, potent and swirling through the night air as he nears.

It looks like Bon Bon has still maintained her heavy involvement with the supernatural after all.

_This_ was going to be good.

.

.

The plan was to let Malcom siphon her magic while Damon snuck up behind him to yank his heart out of his chest.

But because this was a Damon plan, and the probably the one and only time that Bonnie has ever participated in 'spur of the moment' thinking, of _course_ that isn't what ends up happening.

Malcolm turns just in time to see Damon creeping up behind him, and Bonnie's vision is so blurred from the intensive siphoning that she can't even attempt to cry out in warning. She can do nothing but watch as Malcolm's hand delves deep through the crevice of Damon's chest, aiming to grip his heart.

What's left of her magic flares hotly under her skin and latches onto the blood vessels in Malcolm's brain in a last ditch attempt of an aneurysm. It's barely sustainable, but it's enough to distract Malcolm from Damon who immediately collapses into the pavement with a wheeze of pain.

The Heretic lets out a snarl and raises blood-stained fingers towards her, gripping her throat with the reinvigorated magic coursing strongly and solidly through his veins.

His magic curls its hold hotly around her, and it's somehow worse than anything she's ever experienced in her life.

She feels her eyes bulge with the pressure of trying to keep them from being squeezed out of their sockets, while her tongue pulses and flops uselessly out her mouth. Every single vein in her body throbs horribly with pressure, she can feel her face flooding with blood and her lungs draining of oxygen.

It's then, in the midst of feeling as if she is about to implode, that she comes to the jarring realization that Kai couldn't have possibly been using his full capacity of strength when he'd strangled her in the wedding hall. That had been mercy in comparison to the pain Malcolm was eliciting from her now.

The rest of her body feels numb from lack of blood circulation, so she doesn't even feel when her feet are dragged to suspend in the air. White hot panic floods her readily and easily as she drops to Damon's form weighed heavily with the excursion of staying conscious and struggling to raise a trembling hand in her direction.

She can practically feel the tiny bones and cartilage in her neck bending and cracking under the sheer force wrapped around them, and it's only a matter of seconds before they snap completely.

"Kai."

Damon spits out his name from his crumpled position on the ground, his other hand still clutched around his bleeding chest that won't seem to stop seeping with blood.

Bonnie watches helplessly as Kai appears from the shadows behind Malcolm, the gray of his eyes glowing shark-like in the darkness, a knowing look spread across his face.

Kai glances down at Damon and grimaces a bit in disgust at the sight of spittle and blood dribbling down his chin.

Fortunately for Bonnie, Kai's presence serves as a bit of a distraction for Malcom. She feels his magic immediately loosen its hold on her, and the sudden lack of pressure causes Bonnie to slightly stumble when finally making contact with the hard ground, her hands rising to immediately rub at the tender welts forming across her neck. Coughs wrack her spluttering form as her throat desperately opens to try and choke down much needed air.

"How long have you been watching us?"

It's Malcom who speaks over her coughing fit, turning to look at Kai, suddenly completely uninterested in Bonnie.

Kai's eyes curiously trail over Bonnie's hunched form, distantly assessing her, like one would a science textbook.

Part of her wants to feel indignant over his lack of interest in her predicament, but reminds herself that she has no right to.

He's still watching her struggle to gain her breath when he responds to Malcolm.

"Long enough," Kai responds cryptically, but the pleased smile that is now perched on his face tells her he'd been watching them for longer than deemed appropriate.

Surprisingly, he unglues his gaze from Bonnie's form to settle them on the Heretic between them.

He steps carefully around Damon, very flagrantly not wanting to get any vampire blood on his new boots, his hands tug idly on the cuff of the black peacoat he's adorning.

When he speaks again, his eyes are still focused on Malcolm, but the smooth lilting of his voice carries clearly and deliberately to Bonnie through the crisp night air.

"Hey uh, why don't you guys leave us. Malcom and I need to have a little chat about some _things_."

The sudden silence after Kai finishes blares loudly and precariously through her ears as Malcolm and Kai partake in some sort of staring contest, but she doesn't need to be told twice.

Bonnie misses the way Kai's mouth twitches as he watches her immediately scramble to Damon's side and attempt to haul his body upright.

Kai waits patiently for the two of them to hobble out of ear shot before focusing his full attention on the slightly disgruntled and bloodied witchpire before him.

_Oh, stupid Bonnie._ _Stupid, __**stupid**_ _Bonnie and her stupid plans._

He thought she would've known better than to try to mess with a fully-fed Heretic with _Damon_ of all people as backup.

Bonnie doesn't need yet _another_ reason for the Heretics to be wary of her; he's confident that she's probably the only person in her friend group—maybe besides the perky blonde—who has even a slight capability of getting into their good graces should they need to.

And he supposes that now that they're kind of a _thing_, it is his responsibility to clean up her messes.

He's honestly just glad that Malcom is incredibly naive and took the bait of Kai's complete and utter bullshit need for a 'talk'. Poor guy most likely believes that Kai wants to speak to him regarding either the ascendant or the phoenix stone.

There's still a niggling in the back of his head that can't help but think that if it were any other Heretic that Bonnie and Damon had attempted to murder, his job would've been made a lot harder.

And Bonnie very well could've been dead.

And then where would he be?

If his judgement hadn't been so clouded from all the martini's he'd consumed beforehand, he would've torn Malcom's head clean off his body before he'd even gotten the chance to touch her.

And he had only waited so long to intervene in the first place because there was a part of him that desperately held onto the hope that Bonnie was smarter than to go through with a plan that Damon had clearly concocted. He had wanted to believe that she'd had another trick up her sleeve to somehow evade death once again. But when that _clearly_ wasn't the case, he'd had no choice but to step in.

It had been harder than usual to feign uninterest in the scene before him when he'd felt his body tightening and roaring with a possessive rage the longer Bonnie spent in Malcolm's threatening presence.

Malcolm could've killed Bonnie tonight.

And that's not just something he could very well _forgive_ was it?

This thought is what makes it far too easy for him to mutely slip his hand past Malcolm's rib cage and push against wrought tendons until he's pulling away and holding a warm and throbbing heart clutched between his fingers.

_So much for that talk,_ he thinks.

His new consciousness prevents him from swirling his tongue over all the blood sinew and muscle scraped under his nails.

But just barely.

.

.

The rest of the Heretics find Malcolm's body abandoned and heartless on the ground of the Grille parking lot later that night.

Lily Salvatore calls Kai in a flurry of tears, her voice cackling along with the static of the complicated smart phone damn that's near impossible to work.

He actually does manage to feel a pang of upset twinge in his chest at her distress, though it doesn't last very long. Funnily enough, Lily doesn't mention anything about the mundane who he knows had been laying a few feet besides Malcolm's corpse.

Lily is already suspecting the culprit behind Malcolm's cold blooded murder.

And since she's honestly not too far off in her estimate, Kai decides to corroborate her suspicions.

No, Bonnie Bennett couldn't have possibly been involved in something as _petty_ and vengeful as this, he tells her.

Yes, Damon killed Malcolm, he also tells her.

.

.

Caroline and Matt blow up the Heretic mansion on Sansom street the next morning.

* * *

A/N: Since we are very loosely following canon events of season 7, no unfortunately the rest of the Heretics aren't dead yet. They are now angry though. Also did I forget to mention that this bonkai story was going to be a slowburn? Because it's going to be a slow burn.


	5. Dangerous Liaisons

**Dangerous Liaisons**

* * *

_Cobrakai1972 has now followed you on Twitter. _

She looks at her phone from under the hotel room dining table with a frown.

Her gaze immediately snaps upwards to stare at the slightly hunched form sitting across from her.

Kai's focus is lowered and glued to something below the table with a lopsided grin plastered onto his face.

Her green eyes narrow and the crooked frown on her face deepens.

"Really?"

"What?"

Kai finally looks up at her, face swirling with confusion. His grin dies as he takes in her unamused expression, but his eyes still twinkle with excess mirth.

"You made a twitter account?"

The smile he had been sporting earlier springs back onto his face in such a prompt manner that it almost makes her want to roll her eyes. He tosses his phone onto the glossy hotel table and leans back in his chair to better settle his full attention on her. His burgundy long sleeve shirt stretches itself across the expanse of his chest.

"Actually I made one the minute I got out of '94 the first time, I just never followed you until right now."

She snorts a bit to herself then, though everything within her is telling her that everything about this situation is wholeheartedly unfunny.

She hadn't even _thought _about using any form of social media since freshman year of high school. It seemed so unimportant in retrospect. It is somehow onbrand that Kai's first priority upon achieving freedom would be to download something as nonquivical as twitter.

She settles on shaking her head at him, but is halted by a stinging pain traveling up the cartilage of her neck.

Malcolm had really done a number on her.

It had been a few days, but she was still reaping the soreness and painful aches of his suffocating magic. Kai had offered her some of his blood to heal the cuts and likely hairline fractures she'd endured, but she'd refused, opting to heal the old fashioned way. She wasn't going to take any chances.

"I could massage it, if you want."

The "No Thanks" is on the tip of her tongue, fully ready to spill out to halt whatever possibility there is of her letting him voluntarily touch her, but she feels that sharp stinging pain again, this time, a dull throb in the junction connecting her neck to her shoulder. She inhales sharply to prevent herself from crying out, and ignores the way Kai's eyes widen before pinning a pointed look at her.

She sighs. She can already hear the impending argument suspended in the air between them.

"Okay, okay fine."

She doesn't give herself the chance to wonder why she's given in so easily before he readily and noisily scoots his chair from the table, the jarring screech causing her to grimace as he eagerly walks to stand behind her chair. She stares at the half-eaten eggs benedict on her plate, suddenly no longer hungry; her stomach now in knots.

He places his hands on her shoulders first. She's wearing a shirt, but she still feels the undead warmth of the pads of his finger tips pressing themselves deep into her skin. The magic within her flares to reach the surface, almost as if trying to claw its way to the place of contact. Maybe to better reach the familiar hum of his Gemini magic swirling around her.

Her stomach coils at the acknowledgement that his magic is now familiar to hers.

He slowly moves his hands in an up and down motion around her shoulder blades. He's not actually massaging her, he's more like rubbing his palms against her shirt, and she's about to snap at him for getting sidetracked from what he's really here to do, when two fingers suddenly raise to dig around each side of her throat.

When he starts kneading the tender skin of her neck, it feels good. Almost _too_ good.

She feels the moan bubbling in her throat, it's startling presence is hot and heady. But she swallows it down as his fingers press and massage skillfully through her tender skin. Her eyes slip shut, and her teeth draw her lower lip into her mouth instead.

She's so distracted that she almost doesn't notice when he presses his nose against the bulging vein in her neck.

It's such a gentle, harmlessly soft pressure that she almost doesn't think anything of it, but then she feels him slide the bridge of his nose down the artery in a way that contains such a jarringly _possessive_ edge, that her coiled stomach drops, and her magic jumps beneath her pulse.

Her eyes immediately snap open.

The accusatory question is dangling on the tip of her tongue, but is halted once she feels a pair of lips just barely ghost over the soft skin where her neck meets her shoulder blade, and in doing so foraging an embarrassingly violent path of goosebumps in his wake.

She lurches away from him.

Her stomach twists with that _familiar_ awful heat she had been so desperate to dispel the last time he had gotten too close. Her chair screeches itself away from his cajoling fingers, heart pounding so loudly she can feel it pulsing into a headache right in the center of her forehead.

Her wide eyes stare suspiciously at the amusement plastered cleanly across his face.

"Sorry," he says in a tone and an expression that tells her that he is anything but, "I couldn't help myself. Your perfume smells amazing by the way. Is that jasmine?"

"No it's—" _It's vanilla, _she wants to say, but she feels so flustered and perturbed that the word sticks to the roof of her mouth and is unable to force its way out. This—her becoming so easily flustered and off balanced—causes her to pause, and to wonder why she's even indulging in him in the first place.

"Nevermind. Just—thanks, I guess."

"No problem. What are _friends_ for?"

The way he emphasizes the word friend and additionally points a blunt look at her tells her that he is daring her to challenge his wording.

It's a trap, she knows. A sly reference to the time she told him not to get the wrong idea about the nature of their relationship. Because while she can't exactly say that they were mere acquaintances, they were still _way_ past that point in their utterly fucked relationship. And yet, they're still not friends, not exactly, but admitting that out loud would mean admitting that they were something other than a harmless platonic relationship...

Which she was _not_ going to do. So no, she simply returns his smug grin with a sardonic smile of her own, her attention focusing again on her eggs benedict while simultaneously working on getting her heart rate back to normal.

Her phone buzzes against the glossy table, disturbing her attempt at feigning composure.

She quickly grabs her phone, finding that the message is from Caroline asking to meet up with her and Stefan at the Grille. It looks like they're _finally_ ready to take some sort of substantial action towards their current predicament.

"I uh...gotta go."

She's already getting up and sort of mourning the fact that she didn't get the chance to finish her breakfast when Kai's tentative voice is stopping her.

"Where?" He asks softly, almost timidly, like he doesn't want to inconvenience her.

She pauses as she takes in the contradictory intent stare he's fascening to her, knowing she won't be getting out so easy.

She lets out a puff of air, before forcing her voice to take on a light casualness to mask her real cautiousness.

"Well considering the Heretics took it upon themselves to move into the boarding house in retaliation for Matt and Caroline blowing up their only place of residence…"

Her eyes shift around the room a bit, suddenly not wanting to make eye contact.

"We're meeting at the Grille."

.

.

He wants to tell her.

In that moment, watching her shift her footing nervously and biting those plump lips of hers, while she awkwardly tries to tiptoe over the fact that the Heretics have now taken over her original place of brainstorming, he wants to tell her.

He _really_ wants to tell her that the real reason the Heretics are taking retaliation is because they think that Damon killed Malcolm, but he decides to wait.

Mainly because he knows for certain that she feels inherently awkward discussing her predicament with him, especially because it is directly traceable to him.

Not that she knows exactly _how traceable_ it is.

But he wants to bask in it, because for once, she's the nervous one.

But even still, the fact that she had told him where she was going was good enough for him, and from the steady beat of her heart rate, he can tell she's not lying.

So he doesn't say anything, simply nods to himself and watches her leave his presence for her friends.

.

.

"We have a plan."

Stefan wastes no time with dalliances the minute Bonnie slides into the booth at the Grille.

"—Well, _another_ one."

She doesn't miss the way that Stefan chances a quick glance at Caroline, whose jean-jacket-clad shoulder is curiously pressed against his.

"Liv says that her and Jo are still looking around the Gemini compound for the ascendant, but their search has been a bit delayed, what with the coven's affinity for cloaking and all—but we've decided, instead of sitting and waiting for them to find it, we need to take more action against the Heretics."

Caroline sets her drink down, Bonnie can't help but notice that she's still sitting unusually close to Stefan, but she decides that she's more concerned about the worry lines plastered across the blonde's forehead.

"We already know from Enzo's slip up that the Heretics are planning something, with some sort of stone, and though we don't know what it does yet, it can't be good."

"The point is," Stefan finishes for Caroline, "we need to know everything they're planning. We need some sort of way to stop whatever they're trying to do."

Bonnie nods to herself. She knows that they didn't call her all the way down here just to play devil's advocate for some theoretical plan to stop the Heretics. They clearly wanted something from her.

"Okay... so, what do you need me to do?"

Caroline glances nervously at Stefan, giving him a look that causes Bonnie's own forehead to crinkle contemplatively.

"Right now, you're the closest to the source. Lily refuses to even speak with Damon or Stefan after the whole 'blow up plan', Enzo is still God knows where, but you, and _Kai—" _

"—What about me and Kai?" Bonnie grits out despite herself.

Caroline has the gall to look exasperated.

"Oh come _on_, Bonnie. He's like, _obsessed _with you. All we'd need to do is use you as blackmail and I bet you he'd tell us everything."

Bonnie scoffs.

Of _course_ he wouldn't tell her anything, Kai's too smart for that, and he's not '_obsessed'_ with her, he just has a misplaced infatuation.

Yeah, maybe if she keeps telling herself that, her begrudging dread will finally dissipate.

"Please tell me you guys have another plan, some sort of fail safe in the case that this whole blackmail and prison world trap doesn't work out."

Caroline swallows hard then, and chances yet another nervous glance at Stefan who this time, doesn't meet her gaze.

"Well... kinda. That was um, actually the main reason why we called you here."

Caroline clears her throat again.

"The originals. Or more so _Klaus_ for that matter..."

Bonnie's eyes narrow at the name.

"I uh, spoke with him, and he said that he and his siblings may come to help, mainly because he sees the Heretics as a threat—can't have a supernatural being possibly more powerful than a hybrid, right?"

Caroline laughs nervously, while Stefan finds a sudden interest in twirling his finger around the black straw of his drink.

"You spoke to Klaus?"

Bonnie tried to dampen the hysterical lilt clinging to her words, but if Caroline's flinch was anything to go by, she failed miserably.

Even still, Caroline steals herself and leans closer to Bonnie, possibly in an attempt to calm Bonnie's surfacing nerves.

"Yes, I did. And he actually said that if or when he returns to Mystic Falls, he wants to hold some sort of welcome gala, you know to suss out the 'competition' in an inconspicuous fashion."

That...sounds like Klaus.

"But before that, we'd like to know what the Heretics are planning for us, and Mystic Falls...and that's where you and Kai come in."

Stefan has finally abandoned his drink to settle his hazel eyes on Bonnie. Bonnie merely arches an eyebrow as Stefan too inches closer to her, as if wanting to keep their conversation as decrepit as possible.

"Can I ask you something?" Bonnie nods, not quite liking the somber shadow that has spread across Stefan's face.

"Has Kai ever... bitten you?"

"What? Of course not."

She's even more incredulous at the question than she had been at the fact that Caroline had been in contact with Klaus.

She's trying to work out why Stefan would even ask her, when she realizes that Caroline and Stefan don't really know what Kai is like in his vampiric state. They don't know how...reserved he's been.

None of them do, besides her.

"Hmm… so you've never seen him transform or anything around you? Not even a fang or two?"

"No...not once," she mutters, trailing off.

Because the more she thinks of it, the more off putting she considers that notion. Kai is intelligent and calculated, but she's seen him blow up, become overly consumed in emotion; she had seen it once when she'd sent Miss Cuddles back, and again when she'd refused to listen to his heartfelt apology. And yet as of recently, she's never seen him lose grip on his emotions. Not towards vampiric capacities, at least.

Stefan sits back, suddenly not looking so somber anymore.

"And there's our in. Damon and I have been thinking—"

"Damon? _Thinking_?"

She can't help herself. She also can't help the bad taste in her mouth at the thought of Damon and Stefan talking about her and Kai behind her back.

"—And we think we may have the perfect blackmail plan," Stefan glances back at Caroline who nods reassuringly, _clearly_ Caroline had been previously debriefed as well.

"Do you know anything about cloaking spells, illusions, or anything of that nature? Or anyone you could talk to in person about it?"

_You mean besides Kai?_

But then it dawns on her. She knows the perfect witch.

"Yes, actually."

"Perfect."

When Stefan finishes outlining the rest of the intricacy of the blackmail plan, she's left feeling extremely skeptical, to say the least.

It was one of those plans that might just work in their favor, but was always teetering on the cusp of blowing up in their faces.

But she had to try.

The plan in of itself made sense.

Though she thinks that both Stefan and Caroline (and Damon for that matter, since he was involved) may be overexaggerating her pull over Kai.

If he had cared about her so much, something tells her that he wouldn't have tried to kill her at the wedding hall in the first place.

But things are different now, she reminds herself.

She can't so naively ignore the looks he vulnerably places on her when he thinks she isn't looking. Nor can she brush off the recent occurrence in which she is so easily able to bend and meld his behavior towards herself through her own actions.

She'll end up hurting him in the end of it all, she knows.

She had been trying to avoid doing so ever since she'd shipped herself and stripped her freedoms to be with him, but she's been walking on eggshells for too long.

Because first and foremost, she wants her friends safe from the Heretics, and if that means blackmailing and hurting Kai in the process, then so be it.

It's a sacrifice she's willing to take.

.

.

Damon Salvatore has been talking to her a lot about Elena.

They're currently at her dorm at Whitemore, Damon tossing his blue camaro's car keys in his hand as he lays in her bed, while Bonnie flips through her Grimoire after grabbing a few more articles of clothing from her drawers into her bag, including an expensive ball gown she was supposed to wear for her high school graduation dinner that she'd never gotten to use (you know, due to the fact that she was technically dead at the time).

She's been hanging around Damon a lot as of lately. His presence calms her, he's familiar, and ever since he had _actually _come to rescue her from Kai's clutches in the aftermath of Jo's wedding, she knows that he is somebody she can depend on.

She never thought, however, that her newly found friendship with the older vampire would also have her taking on the role of relationship counselor, but she was, apparently.

And she doesn't want to admit it to herself, but she's actually become more partial to Damon than to the woman who she had once considered her sister.

Damon and Elena's relationship, it seems, isn't as epic or romantic as either of them had made it out to be.

Damon's frustrated, about that, and the fact that Stefan refuses to tell him anything regarding his newly budding relationship with Caroline.

But nothing, Bonnie has discovered, makes Damon Salvatore more irritated than when acknowledging Bonnie's relationship with a certain siphoner. It is as if the thought of Kai makes him physically ill, and Bonnie honestly cannot blame him.

She notices Damon absentmindedly rub at a spot on his rib cage through his tirade of not being able to be the 'perfect' boyfriend for Elena. It seems as though Malcolm had also done his damage towards Damon, hitting him with some sort of spell that had caused blood to spill profusely from his wound. In the aftermath, after Bonnie had hauled his body back to the boarding house, the amount of blood Damon had been losing had been horrifying, she's only thankful that his vampiric healing had helped stem the flow, though not completely.

Through Damon's rant, and as she watches his face twist and his plump lips dip downwards at the consequent mention of Kai, her mind suddenly drifts towards the Heretic in question.

She is startled by how different Damon and Kai are.

Both Damon and Kai look at her with the same level of intensity; their icey eyes burn through her skin in the same fashion. Their anger and emotion can be felt ruminating from miles away, their smirks flash dangerously and calmly. And yet they could not be more different. As of lately, she's received kind, docile and coaxing touches from Kai, while Damon grips and presses, and halts her movement with a firm finality.

"...And trust me Bon, don't hold back with him. Kai could burn in hell for all I care."

Bonnie prevents herself from saying that Kai curiously feels the exact same way about him.

She has a feeling that wouldn't help anything.

The worn page of her Grimoire stops and stays folded on just the page she was looking for. When she sees the spell she's looking for, she's reminded all too quickly of the last time she had meddled in something so dark, can almost feel the phantom spirit of a 100 dead witches swirling against the pages, as if warning her to turn back. But it's too late. She knows the spell, her fingers run across the yellowed page in a whispered familiarity, and she's brought back to that night so many years ago when her body had fallen on the cold ground of the cafeteria in 80's garb.

She's danced across the fine line between life and death so many times before, that she doesn't even blink when she confirms with Damon that they have the plan almost ready.

She thinks that maybe it's because she's been broken so many times before, and she's surer, she's more certain than ever that _she _will not be the one to hurt in the end.

"I just have to talk to an old friend beforehand to get some help and then we should be good to go."

"And you're _sure_ you're okay with this? I mean it's some pretty dark stuff Bon, some pretty dark magi—"

She wants to snap back at him then, on reflex, because he had never cared about her over-exerting herself back when she had been spiraling into Expression magic or really, any time before that.

But she doesn't.

She's not so naive enough to not know what she can and can't handle anymore, she's regressed beyond the point of not caring or taking precautions for her own life.

"—I'll be fine, Damon. I know what I'm doing. And I am _not_ about to let Kai get the better of me. Not this time around."

She finally sets the Grimoire down and sits down next to him on her cramped dorm bed and he finally stops fiddling with his keys. She watches wide eyed as Damon gives her another one of those intense stares, the one that seems like he is tracing every detail etched into her face.

She thinks she may have just been seeing things when his gaze flickers quickly to her mouth before he turns away from her completely.

She grips at his leather clad sleeve to turn his attention back towards her. Steadying herself against his firm, rock-like stature as she gets these next words out.

"And after—"

She swallows hard, not quite trusting herself to get the words out the way she wants them to.

And though the conviction she feels is the same, the words for some reason taste differently on her lips, _dirtier_.

"—After we get the information we need, we kill him."

.

.

She receives an alert on her cellphone from Caroline, telling her to look out for a fancy gala mail invitation from Klaus, as he has _already_ started sending them, despite not even stepping foot in Mystic Falls yet.

It looks like their plan is finally beginning to fall into place, she just needs to do her part.

She scrolls downwards and the name "Lucy Bennett" flashes promptly on her phone screen the minute she exits the seedy Grille and into the broad sunlight.

"What do you know about cloaking spells?"

.

.

Kai's not at the Heretic mansion on his own volition, but mainly because he needs to report back _something _to Lily about the supposed 'progress' he's making with discovering Bonnie's plan.

And he's fully ready too, has the whole extrapolated lie ready and poised to spill from his lips, but the minute he walks in, Lily is already in the middle of her own extrapolation.

She's currently speaking on something a bit more..._pressing_.

He's only heard the tail end of her sentence as he's entering, but it's enough for the easy smile on his face to falter.

"—And so we'll kill them, of course."

"Nice!" Kai steps into the room, his grin returning and consequently spreading wider when he sees Nora pinch the bridge of her nose from her perch on Mary-Louise's chair, "Who exactly are we killing?"

"Oh, Kai! You're finally here. We were just discussing our arrangements for expunging Damon and the..._others_."

And normally, Kai would be ecstatic over a plot to eradicate every last person living in Mystic Falls, but his chest tightens at the notion regardless.

He's about to respond, not particularly certain that anything of substance will follow, when he notices another vampire sitting amongst the group of Heretics. He's donning a leather jacket and slicked back black hair coupled with a jaded stare. He seems fairly old, but if the stinginess of his aura was anything to go by, then he wasn't as old as the rest of the Heretics.

Kai's gonna take a wild guess and assume that this man is the Lorenzo guy Lily had been orating about earlier.

"Once Julian and Oscar start to gain their strength back, we'll have ample power to avenge dear Malcolm, and resiege the rest of Mystic Falls."

He hears Enzo scoff at the mention of Julian, and the petulant look that's suddenly swarmed his expression causes Kai's eyebrow to quirk upwards.

It looks like Lily Salvatore didn't need to exploit him as her own personal devoted lapdog, she appeared to already have her own.

"Oh and Enzo," Lily directs her attention to the younger vampire, entirely ignoring his change in demeanor, "make sure the phoenix stone is being kept somewhere safe, because while we have no further use for it, we do not want others knowing of our possession of it."

Kai decides to step in after Enzo does nothing more than obstinately stare at a clearly oblivious Lily, by clearing his throat obnoxiously enough to startle both of their gazes onto him.

"Just to be clear, this little murdering, revenge spree is _not_ including Bonnie, right?"

Lily's eyebrows raise as she turns back to Kai, her face taking on one of those "politely inconvenienced" looks, while Kai's lighthearted expression hardens the longer it takes for her to gather words.

"O-of course. Bonnie will be exempt, if and only if you do not alert her of our plan. But after all, she is solely your liability, and if she chooses to get in our way, you will be responsible for getting her out of it."

Kai shrugs.

It seemed fair enough. He honestly couldn't give a flying shit about what Lily Salvatore did to the rest of the Mystic Falls gang—she could fry Damon's eyeballs in a pot of boiling piss for all he cared.

As long as they didn't touch Bonnie.

Something about the idea of Bonnie getting hurt deeply unsettles and uproots him to an inherent discomfort. The anxiousness he feels festering and pulling in his gut is all too palpably similar to how he used to feel about himself when his semblance was on the line.

There's a possessiveness there, but it mostly gives way to _fear_. His fingers practically itch with the need to be near her.

He'll make sure to hold her extra tight when he gets to spoon her tonight.

He's about to move to finally seat himself after Lily soothes his more prominent worry when another issue latches quickly onto the back of his mind.

"Oh and one more thing. While this is going down, you won't _tell_ Bonnie that I'm in on this right? I mean, not that it really matters, but I just wanna make it seem like it's all out of my hands when it does happen."

_You know, so she won't hate me, _he wants to add, but he's pretty sure the rest of the Heretics are perfectly capable of reading between the lines.

Lily smiles at that, and Kai deliberately ignores a loud sigh drifting from behind him that he knows came from Nora.

"Of course. As long as everything goes as planned, you should have nothing to worry about."

And that, he decides, was good enough for him.

.

.

It turns out that Lucy Bennett knows virtually _nothing_ about cloaking spells, as they are a Gemini coven speciality.

However, luckily for her, Lucy _does_ seem to know a bit about locator blocking spells, masking and disappearance spells, as she'd had to use them through her dalliances with Kathrine Pierce.

So when Lucy explains it all to her, it all feels a bit more _complicated_ than what she's used to. The Gemini way is straightforward and succinct, but since she's not a Gemini, there are a few work arounds needed.

And it's not quite what Stefan had in mind, but it's close enough.

So she goes into the notes section of her cellphone and writes down the additional spell she'll need, and pushes the door to her hotel suite open.

And as her luck will have it, she's just in time for dinner.

.

.

It isn't until after they've settled into bed, and he's slotted himself against her, in which she notices something different.

It's not the soft light of the moon peeking through the hotel curtains that causes a trail of goosebumps to run down her spine.

It's _him_.

There's something more… _urgent _about the way he holds her this time. His hand curls around her tighter, the pads of his fingers press tensely through the thin material of her sleep tank top, as if he's worried that she'll somehow slip from his grasp.

She notices all of this, so she's not sure why she does what she does next.

She should be concerned about the fact that he's being more overbearing than usual, but there's something pulling her to him, that same something buried and deep within her that had latched selfishly onto the intimacy he's been consistently showing her.

So despite her better judgement, she places her own palm on top of his.

And the skin to skin contact of her hand against his cooler one shouldn't feel so...nice. But it does.

She feels him let out a shaky exhale, the warm breath puffing against the tender skin of her neck. She feels on edge, and somehow placated at the same time. She doesn't know why she chose to reciprocate his affections, her brain feels stunted and distracted by the cool feel of his palms.

It's not until he starts rubbing his palm against her stomach, in soft gentle movements, when the alarm bells go off. This is where she normally would yank herself away from him, away from a touch that feels too good to be right.

But she doesn't. She can't, not when her tank top starts to ride up and his flat palm seeks a place on the naked skin. Not when his ringed fingers deftly move to press against her bare hip bone as similarly and expertly as the way he'd pressed them into her neck just this morning.

"W-what are you doing?"

She says it because someone needs to.

There's something binding her in place, keeping her from pulling herself out of his orbit, from his cool hands and swirling Gemini magic. She couldn't physically find the will in her to pull herself from him, but she thought that maybe, her voicing the extremity of him veering off their 'just friends' mandate would shake some sense into the both of them.

Instead it does neither.

Instead, his ringed fingers press and rub, still in that gentle manner, but this time they crawl underneath the slope of her stomach, just barely brushing the hem of her shorts.

Instead, she feels that churning warmth begin low in the pit of her stomach, where his hand traces,

A liquid velvet voice slithers a chill down her back.

"Have I ever told you about the first time I saw you?"

She says nothing, she's too afraid to, as his hand continues to crawl in circles on top of the vulnerable skin of her lower abdomen.

Her throat has gone dry, her magic and heart throb in tangent with one another.

And then despite herself, the magic flares and rises to meet his in answer, spurring him to continue in that same velvety drawl.

"I mean, I guess I actually _felt _you first. It was like this large presence just _pulling_ me by the gut. But I recognized what it was immediately. Bennett magic is just so..._addicting_."

She doesn't know why she allows his hand to just barely flirt and tease along the slope of her pelvis, or why she doesn't stop his trailing finger from just barely dipping below the thin lace of her underwear.

They haven't crossed the line yet, she tries to remind herself, except the slick moisture gathering between her thighs and the way her heart flutters hotly in her chest tells her otherwise.

She wants to scream at him, she feels the familiar outrage at the inappropriateness blooming in her chest, except it's all ripped from her the minute his nose presses deeply into the back of her neck, inhaling her essence like a bloodhound.

She's never felt more severely _wanted _in her life, the thought makes her heart skip over itself.

And she's suddenly afraid. Not because she thinks he's going to bite her, but that he's going to consume her in her entirety.

She lets out a sharp inhale when his fingers dip just slightly lower, and another inhale when she comes to the startling realization that it's not enough.

She knows she wants more despite everything else screaming at her not to.

She almost wants to protest, her eyes snap open in frustration, and as if sensing her slip up, Kai chuckles lightly against her skin.

"And then I saw you. I mean _really _saw you. I was practically a husk of a person at that point. But there you were, a holy vision in a grocery store in the middle-of-nowhere Virginia, in those _tight _overalls with your damned magic tugging me so hard it was near nauseating."

She takes in a sharp breath when his fingers finally dip past her underwear, she feels the cool metal of his rings press against her cervix bone first, and then the rest of his fingertips settle themselves almost _too_ easily onto the sensitive nub of her clit.

She wants to cry out at the sheer unbridled _satisfaction_ of the sensation. Of him finally giving her some of the friction she had been begrudgingly yearning for since that night in their hotel room where he'd pressed his entire being against her.

But she holds herself back, for her own sanity.

"There's a reason why I waited four months before showing myself to you, Bon. I had to learn what it was like to be human again," He starts rubbing her clit in slow circles, in the same gentle motion he had on her stomach, "I had to become _civilized_."

And she should be more ashamed, be more skeptical of the way his seductive murmurings are able to slither themselves so easily and settle straight into her core, but she's not. Instead, her breath hitches when he uses the palm that's cupping her to press her backside firmly into the very prominent bulge in his pajama pants.

She bites her lip in an earnest attempt to dampen the stuttered whimper that releases from her throat, to no avail.

"The first thing I wanted to do was siphon you. Just get my hands around you and _suck_ every last drop of that burning Bennett magic from your skin. But I decided to hold off. I needed time to gather myself. And so I watched you and Damon obsessively, but mostly you."

His voice becomes more airy towards the end of his sentence, his hips now pushing and thrusting steadily against her ass. His fingers begin to rub her with a franticness that causes the growing wetness between her thighs to smear across her skin.

"And while I waited to make my appearance, I thought about a lot of fucked up things, Bonnie," her eyes slip shut, "_Things_ that I'd do to you."

His voice turns dark, but it still drips in that velvety and breathy arousal from before as he slowly slips a finger inside of her. And she's more than ready for him, her underwear already soaked and ruined.

Her eyes blink open again as the sound of her wetness squelching along his fingers pumping into her fills the air of the stagnant hotel room. And she sort of hates it, she feels that familiar self-discontent surfacing again as he continues to stretch and add fingers into her while her spine shudders, until she's distracted by the view of his other arm that had been underneath and perpendicular to her lying form.

They're dry humping now. And it's so rudimentary and desperate yet so _addicting_, that her stomach practically _burns_ with want and slices cleanly through the discontempt.

Her eyes travel to the fingers belonging to his other arm not currently curling inside of her, clenched tightly against the pillow case under her head.

His knuckles are bright white from the ferocity of which he is clutching onto the thin fabric, and it gives her pause.

She knows immediately why he's gripping the silk so fiercely. She thinks about what Stefan said earlier about Kai's eerie control over his vampiric, and more primitive nature.

He's halting himself in a way, to prevent himself from hurting her.

He's trying to keep his movements as controlled as possible as he causes her to unravel beneath him; but she can feel his own control slipping with each groan and choked sigh that tumbles from his lips. So he continues to clench onto the pillowcase for dear life, maybe in an attempt to prevent himself from giving in any more than he already has.

She thinks hazily as his fingers continue to pump more urgently, that she does not possess that same luxury.

She's not surprised then, when he speaks again, that his voice trembles. It's still stealthy and calm, but there's a sort of stagnant anger that gives way to a frustration that she cannot even begin to fathom.

"But they weren't all just fantasies. I was a _sociopath_, Bonnie. The things I wanted to do to you were so _fucked_, but I just couldn't help myself. You think I'm bad now, you wouldn't even _think _about being in the same room as me if you knew."

His breath puffs harshly against her neck now, his chest rising in conjunction with each rock of his hips against her ass.

She almost hates herself for the absolute sluggish bout of pleasure that coils through her body at his vile words.

She lets out a breathy moan and watches hypnotized as white fingers clench and unclench sporadically against her pillowcase.

"And these fantasies…they only ever got worse."

"T-tell me."

Her voice is shot, breathy and vulnerable and desperate and pathetic.

He's reduced her to everything that she hates.

But she wants to know, she can already feel the addiction settling into her skin at the implication of him doing more damage to her than what he's doing now.

Her cunt aches and throbs as more broiling hot pleasure floods through her and curls down to her toes.

The white hand clenches and unclenches again, like clockwork, with each twitching clamp of her own velvety insides around his ringed fingers.

Her magic flickers the hotel lights around her and swarms readily into his darker magic.

"...Bonnie."

The clenched hand rises to harshly grip around her neck.

She whimpers once more.

"Oh fuck, I'm gonna—"

His hips stutter, there's no more rhythm to their madness.

"That's it, let it out, baby."

She doesn't want to imagine what his face looks like, as his words worm themselves through her, she's far past beyond all of that. She can't even blanche at the pet name he called her. She's ascended and is too high to even feel anything except for _him_, wrapped and suffocating along every facet of _her_.

She cries out, her bedside lamp flickers on completely until the lightbulb bursts, and her orgasm hits her so hard that the world colors white around her.

He comes along with her, or she thinks he does, because his hips stop stuttering and moving, his chest begins to slow its upheaval, and his moans begin to die out, slowly and steadily. She can feel the sticky wetness of his cum damply pressing against the back of the thin material of her shorts.

He comes down from his climax before she does.

For her, it's brutal, and embarrassing.

Her swollen insides take a long time to stop twitching against his fingers, she _can't_—despite her complete desperation—stop the whimpers and desperate mewls from leaving her lips, and her entire body shudders on its way back to a familiar plane.

It is only natural that he then would take her flaxen and vulnerable state, and continue to be a complete _douchebag_ about it.

She feels him gently kiss the back of her now sweat slicked neck, cooing and shushing her whimpers as she comes down from her high. And his attempt to calm her and so obviously establish a power imbalance is so aggravating, that that familiar dormant hatred she'd held for him just that morning, flares upwards immediately. That self-righteous disgust starts to fill her lungs, and suddenly it becomes easier to breathe.

She knows that he positively _revelled_ in the notion of her crumbling before him, leaving him and only him to pick up the pieces for her.

He's one up on her _again_.

The thought causes her stomach to coil angrily once.

_He can have this_, she thinks.

Because he'll never have anything like this ever again.

He will never even _touch_ her again.

And so she decides then and there, that when she does finally kill him, she'll enjoy it.


	6. The Downward Spiral

**Also as a disclaimer: I have never seen the originals so I basically have no clue about the canon events of the show, so they'll be retconned for the most part in this portion**

_**So much for playing the long game, Kai. This chapter is also a long one so buckle up.**_

* * *

**The Downward Spiral.**

* * *

"Malcolm's dead."

Damon wastes no time with preambles when entering the dorm room.

"What?"

Caroline plops down on her bed, while Elena continues to curl her hair from the desk across from her. Stefan sits at Bonnie's desk with the chair turned backwards and his arms resting limply off the top rail.

"Malcom—he's dead. Somebody killed him. Keep up, Blondie."

"And how do you know this?"

Damon maneuvers around Stefan and heads straight to their fridge to pluck one of the many blood bags from it, and settles on leaning against it while he continues.

"Enzo let it slip. Said it happened the night before we blew up their mansion. And he told me this _right_ after refusing to tell me anything about the so called "stone" they're keeping."

Bonnie and Caroline exchange a glance. Bonnie _really _wishes Damon would stop talking to Enzo before it ends up blowing in all their faces.

"What, so you think it was Enzo who did this?"

Elena stops curling her hair and turns away from the mirror to eye Damon speculatively.

"It was Kai," Bonnie finishes the answer before Damon gets the chance to respond.

Bonnie already knows he was the culprit before even fully piecing it together.

Kai was the last person to see Malcolm alive, it only made sense.

"Of course it was," Elena responds acerbically, before turning back to finish curling her hair.

First it was the random civilian, and now one of his own Heretics.

She just can't figure out exactly _why_ it was that he finished the job for them.

After a few moments of pondering silence, Stefan speaks up again, the wrinkles on his forehead smoothening.

"Well, this is a good thing isn't it? We wanted our proof that he cared and there we have it. Someone was a threat to Bonnie's livelihood, so he killed them."

The implication behind Stefans words are strong, sure, and perfectly rational, so she's not sure why they take her so off guard.

Normally, this is where she'd try to think of an excuse, that her protection couldn't have been the reason Kai had targeted Malcolm.

He had seemed so disinterested in her wellbeing that night...

But then her mind flashes back to the aftermath of their..._concourse_.

_She's still a quivering mess underneath his hands that are now smoothing out the goosebumps that had erupted along her arms. _

_The sweat slicking the back of her neck has long since gone cold, but he doesn't stop brushing his lips against the skin there. _

_He's the first to speak again, in a low rumble that hums through her. _

"_I know you probably think I'm still a monster, Bon. But I promise you, I'm not the same as I was." _

_She says nothing. She's not quite sure what to believe anymore. Her mind is still hazy from the aftermath of staggering waves of pleasure. Her cunt still throbs weakly. _

"_The truth is, I don't know what I would do if anything happened to you. I'm serious." _

_His voice has taken on a somber lilt, showcasing the severity of his convictions, the steady rumble still vibrating against her skin. _

"_I just want you to trust me." _

_The last part of his sentence wavers slightly through his breath, and she can hear the desperation cleanly bleed through. _

_It makes the corners of her lips curve upwards in a smile. _

_And it's not because she's touched by his sentiments, but because he's confirmed her suspicions. _

_She can no longer ignore his very obvious feelings for her. _

_So she doesn't. _

_And she feels lighter for it, almost. _

_The acknowledgment allows her to be more open and accepting in the days following, especially now that she knows that she will not be dealing with him for much longer. _

.

.

They've decided on waiting to implement her blackmail plan.

Stefan believes that it would benefit all of them to try it _during _the gala when Kai is not only distracted by other variables, but so that he can be properly primed in the days leading up to it.

Liv, Jo, Tyler, and Alaric are arriving back in Mystic Falls the night before the gala, so it only makes sense to wait to get them in on the plan as well.

And additionally, the extra time will allow Bonnie to get her shit together regarding one of two powerful spells she needs to use, though only Damon knows this detail.

To tip the odds even further in her favor for her plan, she's been slowly weaning Kai off of blood bags in the days leading up to the gala.

She knows he's only finished one full one so far this week. She's been stashing the rest in her dorm refrigerator at Whitmore, something that Damon is quite pleased about as he gets to freely mooch off of them.

All this means is that Kai should be hungry. But not hungry enough that she can't distract him from the suspicious lack of blood bags with other things, but enough so that the main fodder of her plan works.

She thinks often of what they do in their free time together. He's taken to showing her various Gemini spells. Watching hours worth of movies in their freetime had gotten a bit old, but Gemini cloaking and illusion spells she decides, have yet to become boring for her. He seems to enjoy doling out various spells, and she enjoys being exposed to other facets of magic that hadn't been so readily available to her in the past years.

Gemini magic is just so _different _from Bennett magic, it's much more succinct, yet subtle, though it seems as though it takes up more energy. It sort of scares her in a way, the boundlessness of Gemini magic makes it seem as though anything within their realm is possible; something that she had to learn the hard way, was _not_ possible with Bennett magic.

Kai's in the middle of changing the coke bottle nestled in her hand to look like a Pepsi, when Bonnie gets an important alert from her cellphone.

It's a warning from Caroline about receiving their gala invitations later on that day, and they ultimately do.

They get their invitations in the mail. Prim, crisp white envelopes with gold, official looking trimming.

After inspecting them thoroughly, Kai immediately asks her to be his date with an eyebrow wiggle. Bonnie rolls her eyes in response, though the unspoken affirmation is present.

They get ready together the evening before the gala begins.

She slips easily into her silken dress. The deep green color makes her eyes look brighter, her hair sits prettily in a low bun with wavy strands framing her face. The makeup she uses is minimal, but the golden theme gives her skin a natural-looking glow, her cheekbones look more defined, and her lips plumper. Gold earrings hang to nearly rest on her shoulders, complimenting the gold necklace her Grams had given her that rests against her chest.

When she steps out of the bathroom in tan heels, her breath catches when she sees Kai. The Heretic immediately stands from his seat on the bed upon her entrance, giving her a full view of his attire. He's donning an expensive-looking black suit, the trimming and cuffs are sleek and sharp, his dress pants tight against wiry thighs, held together with a designer belt, and shoes to match. His facial scruff is neat and trimmed, and his hair is styled in precise strands, a few stray locks falling over his forehead in a very 'Clark Kent' fashion.

He looks a bit _too _good for her liking.

And the notion kind of makes her stomach sink and flutter simultaneously.

It makes her miss the times in which she had been disgusted by his very presence.

Mainly because she is suddenly not entirely sure how she is going to be able to focus on what she's supposed to be accomplishing tonight given his outward appearance.

And from the way his eyes trail languidly up her body with his jaw clenched, it seems as though he has come to the same conclusion for her.

So on the ride over, she tries in vain to ignore the way Kai's stare burns into her skin, and instead focuses on preventing the blush sprinkling her cheeks from spreading like wildfire throughout the rest of her body.

.

.

When she enters the mansion Klaus had rented out with her arm tentatively wrapped around Kai's, she's sort of at a loss for words.

The sikorski crystal chandelier hanging from the ceiling is the first thing she notices upon stepping into the gorgeous mansion. There's a large ballroom floor sectioned in the center of the main room, rows upon rows of elegant circular dining tables are aligned to the left of the ball room, while the right of the room contains skinny tables lined meticulously with various fancy drinks and flutes. A man sits running his fingers melodically along the keys of a large white grand piano with a minimalist string ensemble stationed in front of it. Various waiters in uniform walk around with small trays filled with probably every hors d'oeuvre known to man.

And most strikingly, the ball room is bustling with people.

It seems as though Klaus had invited all of Mystic Falls. Or at least all their higher up citizens if their expensive attire was anything to go by. She briefly wonders if they're all supernatural, but decides that that isn't entirely important. It sort of works in everyone's favor; the more bystanders there are, the less likely anyone is to cause a scene.

A man comes to take their coats from them, and Bonnie has to fight the blush that blooms on her cheeks yet again as Kai's large hands brush against her bare shoulders in removing her coat for her to hand to the man. Another man leads them to their table, which was apparently assigned to them. She doesn't have it in her to be skeptical of the fact that this random man already knows who both her and Kai are.

The excited bubbliness she feels at the grandeur doesn't fully fizzle until after they arrive at their empty table. She sees her name tag propped neatly on the lavish table in the same font and trim as had been used on the invitations.

Her eyes quickly scan the rest of the nametags, and stark realization dawns on her when she realizes that she is going to be stuck at a table with Heretics. Malcolm's name is not present, though there are two additional names she doesn't recognize. Their tags are propped on either sides of Lily Salvatore's, though Bonnie doesn't much care to discover their identities.

_One issue at a time_, she reminds herself.

She can only be grateful that the rest of the Heretics haven't arrived yet. She doesn't plan on ever sitting down with them. She plans on leaving long before it has to get to that point. That in of itself was a sure recipe for disaster. So instead, she turns around and scans the rest of the room, sighing almost overwhelmed with relief upon seeing Caroline in her pink ball gown by the grand piano speaking to Elena, their curled hair dropping in ringlets over their shoulders.

She doesn't feel bad when she immediately turns to Kai and tells him that she's going to go catch up with Caroline, especially not after spotting Nora and her witchpire girlfriend making their way over to Kai's table.

He merely winks at her and tells her to hurry back.

She doesn't have it in her to tell him that she has no plans on doing so.

Bonnie watches Elena whisper in Caroline's ear upon spotting Bonnie weaving her way through the plethora of bodies, grinning as Caroline whips around immediately with her face splitting open in a smile. They exchange pleasantries, all three of them gushing over the other's appearances.

Elena, for whatever reason, stares at something from over Bonnie's shoulder, her perfectly manicured eyebrow furrowing in suspicion and her head cocking slightly to the side as her brown doe eyes dart to Bonnie and then to settle on whatever's behind her. Bonnie is about to ask her what's wrong when Elena's voice cuts through the background noise.

"Have you and Kai ever…" Elena trails off, but the implication is clear.

"—What? No, of course not. Not even in a _million _years_." _

Bonnie feels her cheeks burning yet again, but this time more so in frustration, she feels righteously disgusted at Elena's aspersion, despite the slight ringing of truth. Elena still looks distracted and suspicious as her eyes cross back over to Bonnie's clearly disgruntled form, but her head ultimately shakes itself out of whatever contemplative pondering she was doing.

"Sorry it's just...nevermind."

Bonnie can tell that Elena wants to press the questioning further, and would be willing to bet that it was Kai who Elena was studying from over her shoulder, but Bonnie doesn't want to think of him. What she wants is him, and his uncanny ability to make her blush to be expelled far from her mind.

Before that little inkling in the back of her head tells her to look back at Kai before she can help herself, she suddenly spots Damon making his way determinedly to them. He looks handsome in his tailored black suit, his icy eyes pop starkly against skin, and his jet black hair is slicked back. She just barely can make out Stefan chatting with Matt and Tyler, donning handsome suits of their own by the flute table.

Damon plants a kiss briefly onto the side of Elena's head upon his arrival, he detaches from his girlfriend and his pouty lips go to form around a cheesy compliment towards her and Caroline before he can help himself, until finally stepping towards Bonnie with open arms.

She sinks immediately into Damon's firm chest. His strong arms wrap tightly around her, the blatant familiarity is almost jarringly comforting. She had been on edge since arriving with Kai, her heart rate elevated and her body had felt more flushed and nervous than she could ever remember it being, but Damon's presence easily smoothed those rough edges.

"You ready for tonight?"

His low voice floats from the top of her head, and she nods and hums a sound of approval that sounds muffled against his dress shirt, his manly cologne filling her sinuses.

"Now just remember, we want him to lose control, but witches blood—"

"—Is more potent, I know. I'll be fine okay, Damon? I promise," She draws back slightly then to look him in those icy eyes of his, wishing firmly to smooth out the worry lines drawn against his forehead.

He presses a gentle kiss to her own forehead, but Bonnie misses the way Elena's eyes trace astutely on Damon's movements.

"He's staring again, Kai," chimes Caroline, breaking Bonnie out of the comforting bliss she was in.

Bonnie untangles her arms from Damon's middle, and following everyone else's stares, turns her body halfway to watch Kai, though Damon's hands remain loosely planted on her waist.

Kai's sitting alone at the Heretic table with only Valarie as company. She appears to be attempting to communicate with him, though from his body-language and gaze direction, he is clearly not listening. A large ringed finger trails lazily along the rim of his wine glass, his posture slightly slouched and careless, but his eyes remain dark and acute as they settle deliberately on Damon and Bonnie's forms. From his position across the ball room, it seems as though he couldn't be farther away from them really, but the intensity at which he stares at them can be felt so clearly that it causes a brief shiver to roll down her spine.

Damon chooses then to direct Bonnie's attention back to him, his soft voice cutting through the glue of her stare.

"Just be careful tonight, Bon."

His hand raises to brush a curling tendril of hair from her face. And this time, she _knows _she's not imagining things when his eyes flicker to her mouth, reminding her of the very real kiss they had shared on top of broken glass and blood all those times ago. Her need to dwell on this thought is quickly swept away by the need to reassure him.

"I know...I have everything in place."

She isn't quite sure then why her voice wavers ever so slightly.

"Good, good," He's still speaking to her tenderly, his blue eyes roaming hers, until he finally steps backwards and drops his hands from her body. The sudden warmth that is lost at his detachment almost makes her want to pull him back towards her, but the thought dissipates from her mind as soon as it forms.

Damon turns to address the rest of them.

"The _other_ good news is, Liv and Jo found the ascendant."

.

.

He originally was having a grand old time drilling holes into Damon Salvatore's annoyingly large head, and then consequently thanking the gods that he wouldn't have to converse with anyone in the Scooby gang (especially not the doorknob that is Elena Gilbert), when two unexpected presences fill his vision.

"Ah! And to what do I owe this pleasure?"

His sisters, Jo and Liv appear before him. He first notices that Jo's pale blue eyes look a bit more sunken than normal, and their skin has taken on that greyish fresh vampire glow. Liv's hair is tied into an intricate blonde bun sitting on the top of her head, while Jo's brunette waves tumble past her shoulders to rest along the top of her tan ball gown. Their glammed appearances however, do not distract from the fact that their mouths are downturned into petulant frowns.

"You killed my twins."

Valarie takes this as her cue to leave him stranded, seemingly not wanting to get involved in family squabbles, which was a smart move on her part. Kai finds himself secretly cursing her for not taking him with her.

Jo always had a soft, delicate way of speaking, and yet was somehow consistently able to convey a plethora of strong emotions in one sentiment, "I should ram this table leg straight into your heart."

His fingers still their swirling along the empty wine glass.

"What? No 'thank you' for saving your lives? You're welcome, by the way. And also, in case you need a reminder, I'm still kinda your coven leader so if you did kill me, you'd _kinda_ be dead..._again_."

He is actually only like, 17% sure that that is a true statement.

"Oh, fuck off."

Liv takes a threatening step closer to him, but Jo is the one halting her movement. Ironic considering Jo was supposed to be the uncontrollable Ripper of the two.

Kai waggles his finger, "Not now, Livvie-poo, the adults are talking."

"We're the _same _age," Liv grits out, her fingers gripping angrily against the baby blue fabric of her dress.

"Yeah, funny how that worked out, isn't it?"

He can tell Liv is about to rip him a new one, when Jo speaks again, her eyes moving to settle back on his.

"How could you do this to me, Kai?"

Jo says it quietly, finally diverting his attention back to his twin. Self-righteous anger flares in his chest at the somber and defeated look that's sunk into her face.

"I _saved_ your life," Kai's jaw clenches in anger, but his throat burns as he gets the words out.

"Being a vampire is not the same as being alive and you know that."

Jo swallows harshly and Kai can see the tears beginning to glisten in her eyes, causing his own chest to tighten uncomfortably underneath all the outrage.

"You killed my _babies_," her voice is so, so soft.

"I did you a favor," He corrects, "_I_ get to remain coven leader, and you don't have to see your child murder the other in a god-forsaken twin ritual. If anything, I saved you the heartache."

He shrugs simply, the small bout of sympathy and guilt finally subsiding along with his anger, as his justification being voiced out loud successfully hardens his resolve.

"Burn in hell," Jo spits it at him and this time, her voice is no longer gentle but hardened, her eyes still glistening with unshed tears.

His eyes trail briefly to Liv who looks at him with the same amount of spite, and he feels his chest tightening again, but this time his stomach sinks along with it.

"I'm counting on it, dear sister," He grins for good measure.

They leave him there with that god-awful bitter taste in his mouth, so he gets up from his seat and walks to the fancily assorted bar table to wash it out. He sees Bonnie out of the corner of his eye and watches her head through the double doors to the restroom. He doesn't know why he expected her to see him alone and swoop in as his knight in shining armor, but he feels the disappointment regardless.

Reality's a bitch sometimes.

"Families are rough, aren't they?"

A slender blonde woman in a sleek red dress helps herself to some of the flavored seltzer next to him. She glances up when he does nothing but continue his search for a drink strong enough to make him forget his last conversation.

He's been feeling so damn hungry lately, and he thinks that maybe the alcohol will also serve to stem his cravings.

"Freya Mikealson," the blonde continues, though he hadn't given her any indication to.

_An original. _

His eyebrows quirk upwards at the reveal, and yet, he doesn't feel any vampiric aura wafting from her.

So when she holds out her hand, he tentatively shakes it only to get a better read of her.

He feels the magical energy immediately once their palms connect.

A fellow witch. Interesting.

"Kai Parker, but you already knew that."

He's reminded of what Valarie had said to him earlier, about randomly running into a Mikealson, and then what she'd told him a few moments ago at the Heretic table about this Mikealson gala being the perfect opportunity to find his answers.

He ultimately decides against prying Freya for information about Mary Alice and Astrid. Something about heckling another witch for information doesn't seem right to him. He'd much rather harass one of the original vampires instead.

And Freya…she had a bit of a forlorn look about her in his eyes. And if her family issues were anything like his...

So he doesn't speak further, and instead picks up the drink that he knows has tequila in it, and against his better judgement, downs it in one gulp.

.

.

She mutters the Latin underneath her breath from inside the bathroom stall.

Bonnie had searched the lavish restroom thoroughly before she'd entered, and fortunately found it deserted. She feels a sort of layery film of dread settle around her, but she assumes that it's because the dark spell is working. She'd always felt knots gather in her stomach when performing dark magic, but the air breathed into her lungs always felt brighter and more artificially sufficient afterwards, and this time was no different. It's merely a protection for her, the first part of her plan, a mirror of the spell she'd used when Klaus had to suck Elena dry in a ritual all those moons ago, and when she had fought him head on at the 80's dance; your average failsafe of a revival spell.

She supposes that it is a nod to how far her magic has developed, she no longer needed a slew of candles or 100 dead witches to accomplish something like this. A simple slit of her palm using one of her embroidered hair pins had done the job.

She steps out of the stall, her heels clacking heavier on the ground for some reason. She catches her own reflection and fortunately doesn't see anything too out of place. Although her palm now aches, her skin still dewy and bright from her makeup, her lips still coated in lip gloss, though her eyes do look a bit more jaded than normal.

Bonnie runs into Rebekah on her way from the bathroom stall. The blonde's wearing a deep blue gown, her hair is slicked away from her face and trails down her back. She looks gorgeous as expected, but Bonnie has long since given up being impressed by anything when it came to the conniving vampire.

Bonnie had hoped to simply ignore her on her way out, but Rebekah is fast to address her with her arms crossed and a slanted smile.

"Well if it isn't the Bennett witch. Still gallivanting after the doppleganger, I presume."

"Good to see you again too, Rebekah," Bonnie mutters it under her breath, but she knows that the vampire can hear her loud and clear.

She turns on the faucet to wash her hands and Rebekah takes out a bright red lipstick from her purse and bends slightly in front of the mirror to apply it.

"Your perfume smells delightful, by the way. What is it? _Magic?" _

The original chuckles to herself and Bonnie _really _resists the urge to roll her eyes. And because it is in a Mikealson's nature to prolong annoyances, she continues to speak.

"Is it true that you're dating the new Gemini leader? The one who was talking to my sister a few moments ago?"

"Excus—"

"Anyways, if I were you, I'd stake my claim before somebody else gets to him. He's looking a bit unattended, you wouldn't want him to get..._distracted_."

She catches Bonnie's eye in the mirror and winks.

Her stomach coils hotly at the suggestive tone and smirk gracing Rebekah's face.

Bonnie's about to retort when she gets cut off _again_.

"I personally never thought you had it in you, you didn't seem one to go for the dark and powerful type. Last I remembered, you were off babysitting the Gilbert boy," Rebekah finishes applying her lipstick and Bonnie watches her pucker her lips in the reflection. Bonnie feels defensive at the mention of Jeremy, and though she no longer harbored feelings for her ex, she still felt a protectiveness over him.

That, and she does _not_ like what Rebekah is insinuating at all about Kai.

Rebekah finally turns to face Bonnie and her blue eyes languidly drawl once over Bonnie's form.

"Good for you," She says flippantly, completely choosing to ignore Bonnie's peeved temperament as she saunters out the door.

Bonnie's not sure why she's suddenly overwhelmed with anger.

Her stomach roils with it, and it's not until Rebekah's long since left until she realizes that that haughty feeling that coiled in her stomach at the mention of Kai, was _jealousy_.

.

.

"So _you_ are the Heretic leader, I presume?"

Kai's surprised he's being approached by the original hybrid of all people.

He honestly expected to work harder for the acknowledgement, but here the original was, in all his hybrid glory, stepping besides Kai to watch people dance across the ballroom with a drink in hand.

"Klark Mikealson, right?"

Kai sees the hybrid's eyes flash in annoyance from the corner of his vision. Turns out the werevamp had a temper. Figures.

Kai's not too concerned about first impressions right about now. He suspects the alcohol is helping with that sentiment.

"_Klaus _Mikealson, actually, but close."

"Sorry," Kai says, not sounding sorry in the slightest, "I've never been good with names...And uh, to answer your question, no. The Heretic leader title belongs to the Mama Heretic in chief."

He doesn't care to mention that the title Klaus was looking for that pertains to him was _coven _leader.

What he _does_ do is nod to the redhead across the room who currently has her arms wrapped around Julian on the ballroom floor.

Klaus' snake-like eyes follow his trail of sight before settling astutely back on him.

"Hmm, but you are the most powerful of the Heretics, am I correct?"

_Ah, and __**that**_ _is why Klaus has approached him. _There's always a catch.

"What's with the interrogation, brother?"

Another Mikealson, he presumes, steps on the other side of him, in a very thinly veiled attempt to demoralize him.

Two against one, how _original_.

This brother's face is smooth, contrasting the dusting of hair covering Klaus', though his eyes glint with the same wickedness. Kai can't help but think that this brother's grin is distinctly shark-like.

God, the stench on these two is ridiculous. They might as well be holding signs above their heads that say 'we're original vampires.' You can just _smell _their intimidation tactics from miles away.

"Oh nothing, Kol. I was merely making small talk with one of our esteemed guests."

That is when Kai notices out of the corner of his eye, from across the room, who he guesses is the third Mikaelson brother attempting to inconspicuously eavesdrop on their conversation as well. That is, until his presence is promptly taken up by Bonnie's blonde friend Clarice or something or other. He notices Klaus's gaze catching onto Bonnie's friend and lingering.

Kai doesn't really have interest in watching Klaus gaze at the blonde vamp from afar, so he cuts to the chase.

"So you two live in New Orleans, right? What's it like?"

The brothers draw their attention back to Kai before quickly exchanging glances over Kai's shoulder that Kai doesn't even care to try to decipher.

"Jazz, _magic, _daliences_, _the usual_._ "

Kai nods at Klaus' words, whatever _that_ was supposed to mean.

"You know, I actually had a few friends who lived there, back in the day. Mary Alice Claire and Astrid Malachance."

Klaus' body tenses at the same time Kol's grin tightens considerably.

"And how might you know them?"

Kai can hear the warning in Klaus' voice under the guise of politeness clear as day.

He almost wants to drop the pretences and just get on with attempting to rip at each other's throats. It would be less painful than all this gallivanting around the subject.

"Friend of a friend," Kai says simply, his grin growing wider as a precarious silence blooms between the three of them.

He decides to push his luck anyways.

"You wouldn't happen to know where they are by the way? Last I heard they were stuck in some mansion."

He knows he's playing with fire, he's not being nearly subtle enough, but he's not interested in running in circles, not when the alcohol in his system is doing a fine job at stripping the edge off his normally calculated persona.

Just as Klaus lets out what Kai _thinks _might have been a growl, Kol butts in.

"Now don't be rude, brother. Of course we know where your friends are. They're at the Dowager Fauline's mansion. Fairly famous, couldn't miss it."

They both stare at Kol's calm form half-incredulous at the fact that he chose so readily to divulge this information, though Kai personally thinks he did a better job at masking his surprise than Klaus did.

"And now, since we've given you ample information, it would only be fair of you to return the favor. As in, letting us know why there are two additional Heretics seated with you this evening."

Interesting catch. It's funny how they mentioned the two new Heretics but not the absence of a (very dead) one.

"Oscar and Julian? They're not actually new," _Lie_, "they were with us in the 1903 prison world, but left the minute we got out, they wanted to live a "normal life" apparently. " _another lie_. "But you know how persuasive that Lily Salvatore is. Family's gotta stick together and all that."

That last part was not _technically _a lie.

"And are you a part of this "family"?"

Klaus' eyes glitter in wait of his response, and Kai has the offhanded thought that they really are a bit freakishly pretty.

Kai knows from Valarie how particular the originals are with family and he supposes in a way the Geminis and Heretics are too.

His answer will be important.

"Nope."

He pops the 'p' for emphasis and grins wolfishly while Klaus blinks a bit in expertely veiled surprise at his easy admittance. Kol glances once more at his brother.

Good, it'll keep them off guard enough for him to change the subject.

He looks side to side and ushers the two brothers to step a bit closer to him, though they do no such thing. Kai almost wants to grin once more at how both Mikealson brothers finely track his every movement as his voice lowers,"If you want to know something _really_ interesting..."

He settles on telling them about the existence of another prison world, though they seem largely unimpressed. If Kai's being honest, they'd most likely have already been briefed on it by Bonnie's circle, but Kai doesn't care. He's gotten extremely good at taking on the role of vapid communicator. He figures that if he blathers on about something they have virtually no care in, they'll become disinterested, assume that he's daft and no longer bother with him. All without even realizing that they had benefited him, while he had given virtually nothing back.

He can practically see Kol's eyes becoming glossy as they trail off to the side through Kai's expungement of words, Klaus' nostrils flare in annoyance, though the polite grin never wavers from his face.

He decides then that he and Kol will get along splendidly, (he too, does not enjoy listening to people speak) that is until he follows Kol's eyeline. They've drifted straight to Bonnie, who is helping herself to a flute at the drink table. Kai feels a growl of his own bubbling in his throat as he catches Kol's eyes glide slowly up Bonnie's figure.

A sudden movement catches his eye and causes him to turn from Kol to watch Bonnie yet again, and this time, he watches Enzo stride up to the Bennett witch, his bodice settling a bit too close for his liking.

Jesus, what is with all these vampires and looking at his date like she's a piece of meat?

He's about to vamp speed over there, can practically feel his fingers itching with the need to wrap themselves around Enzo's collar and rip him away from Bonnie, when Damon steps in seemingly out of nowhere. Kai watches Damon's hand gathering at the small of her back in a gesture that seems far too casual and practiced.

"'Scuse me."

Kai murmurs abruptly as he steps away from the Mikealson brothers to make his way back towards his date. Kol has since moved onto ogling other women in their vicinity and barely even notices Kai's sudden departure.

He gets the tail end of Bonnie and Damon's conversation as he slinks nearer. The several voices from the bodies around him tamper over each other and make it difficult for Kai to parse out what Bonnie and Damon are talking about, but he manages to snag onto a few words of their conversation. Damon says something about Bonnie needing to be careful, he's guessing of people like Enzo.

Kai can't help but smirk ruefully. His skin burns with envy at how easily Bonnie seems to trust Damon, the possessiveness he feels over her causes his magic to heat in his veins and his eyes to narrow into slits.

If anyone is going to be "protecting" Bonnie, it'll be him.

.

.

"Is he bothering you, Bon Bon?"

Without waiting for Enzo's answer, Damon drags her longways along the table and away from Enzo's prying stare. Bonnie barely notices as Enzo slinks off into the background, their earlier conversation, and the drink she had been holding, discarded.

"_More _good news," Damon cuts right to the chase once he realizes Enzo is no longer within earshot, "Caroline's already spoken to Klaus, but she just got done talking to Elijah and they're on board for creating a diversion for the Heretics—keep them away from Mystic Falls long enough so that they can't finish whatever it is they're currently planning. Elijah already knows we have the ascendant safely tucked away in Mystic Falls, but he's left smoke trail hints to Lily about the possibility of it being in NOLA."

"Did Elijah also mention that they would kill them for us?"

Bonnie can't help the hopeful tone in her voice, though she _is_ being half sarcastic.

"No. He said there were too many of them for that, and that they are currently in the middle of their own white oak stake...issue, which leaves them more vulnerable than usual. But they're still helping us stall until we get all the information we need from Kai."

"When do you think—"

Damon cuts her off suddenly, his nose wrinkling in confusion as he sniffs the air before her.

He sniffs again, this time a bit more aggressively and steps a little too far into her space to be deemed appropriate.

"Why do you smell like that?" Damon hisses, his hand that had been placed on the small of her back reaches to grip onto her elbow and guide her a few steps to an even more secluded area.

"Like what?"

"Like _blood." _

Now that she thinks about it, Rebekah did comment on her perfume in the bathroom earlier, but Bonnie had chalked it up to her attempt at toying with her.

Not to mention that _Enzo _of all people was making eyes at her and being nicer than usual when he'd bumped into her at the drinks table. Her witch blood had probably hazed over his dickish nature.

Figures.

"I-I had to cut my palm a bit for the spell."

"And you did it here?"

Damon's eyebrows rise incredulously. Maybe she did go a bit off the script, but she had her reasons.

"I wanted to do it sooner rather than later, while everyone else was distracted. I wouldn't have enough time to do it while getting ready or leaving the gala, what with Kai following me around twenty-four seven."

"You're in a room full of _vampires_, Bonnie, and that measly drop of blood is making you smell—" Damon cuts himself off and inhales sharply through his nose, but doesn't continue his sentence as his eyes slip shut, his adam's apple bobs thickly in his throat. Bonnie watches slightly curious and slightly transfixed at his reaction as jaw ticks once and his startling eyes snap back open.

"The point _is, _you're lucky people can only smell you when they're close, but that just means you'll have to leave soon. I just want you to be careful, Bon—".

"—Hope I'm not interrupting your little lover's quarrel."

Bonnie whips around to assess who had just interrupted them as Kai appears from behind her form, his grey-blue eyes glittering in clear challenge, with a half smile gracing his features.

She can practically feel Damon's stare drilling into Kai's form over her head. And even though her back is now turned to Damon, she'd be willing to bet that Damon's eyes were narrowed.

"—Actually—"

"—Damon," Bonnie immediately hisses. Her eyes flit back and forth in apprehension as she watches Kai and Damon stare cooly at each other over her head. Damon's jaw is clenched tightly and while Kai still has an easy going smirk quirked on his face, his eyes are hard and she can see his fist clenching by his side.

This is _not _good.

"Listen, Damon. Kai and I uh, actually need to talk," when Damon does nothing except nod at her to go ahead, Bonnie's eyes narrow, "_Alone." _

Damon's eyes finally return to Bonnie's and after a brief searching assessment of her equally unwavering stare, he briefly squeezes her elbow once more before turning on his heel to walk away. Bonnie sighs a bit, thankful that Damon had been the bigger person and smartly chose not to escalate the situation, before turning back to Kai, whose petulant stare was still focused on Damon's retreating form.

"Stop it, Kai. You're acting like a jealous child_." _

Kai does nothing except chuckle darkly, a saccharine smile curving his plump lips.

"What _is_ it about Damon Salvatore that keeps you going back to him?"

He's still staring at the spot in the crowd where Damon had disappeared. And the longer he watches Damon, the more urgency Bonnie feels towards turning the attention back on herself and _quickly_.

"Kai, look at me," She wants to let out a breath of relief when cool grey eyes return to her face immediately, "I don't want you to think about him, okay? I'm _your _date, remember?"

She sees his jaw tick at her words, his shoulders straighten and arch before relaxing, as if her words are sinking into his very being.

"Yes you are...mine."

_Date, _she wants to add. She bites her tongue to prevent herself from correcting him.

Her eyes snag onto his and her throat suddenly dries.

His eyes burn hotly, red bleeding into the clear gray, and this time, she sees the fine veins ripple briefly underneath the thin skin below his eyes. This is the first time she had ever seen his face transform, and there's something beautifully terrifying about it. He blinks, then, some of the dark coloring of his irises righting themselves to their normal state, the veins under his eyes dissipate as fast as they came.

"Sorry I-I guess I'm just hungry or something."

He shakes his head a bit, as if loosening himself from the aggressive hunger that was holding onto him.

_Or something_ is correct.

She doesn't corroborate his sentiment, instead, she steps into his space and watches as his eyebrows raise briefly.

She needs to sell this next part that she readies herself for, and she feels that familiar feeling of nervousness start within her, the same nervousness that had started when she'd first lied to him back in the wedding hall. She wonders briefly if she can handle the sheer amount of cruelty that will perspire from her actions tonight, but then she remembers everything he's done to her, and it suddenly doesn't seem so insidious.

This was bigger than her, or him. It was for the betterment of her _friends_. Like always.

She licks her lips briefly, attempting to swallow down her nervousness and better ready herself for what she's about to say next. A bout of confidence sweeps through her when she sees his gaze blatantly flicker to her mouth.

"You're just hungry, I get it. Which is why..." She takes a deep breath, "I want you to bite me tonight."

"What? Why?"

The response is immediate, the surprise readily present on his face, and Bonnie can honestly say she doesn't blame him.

She goes to gently place his large ringed hands in hers. She takes another deep breath before continuing, making sure to never drag her eyes from his for even a second, and attempts to keep her face as vulnerable and open as possible.

"I've been thinking, and I think this could be really good for us. Because not only are we currently out of blood bags, but I don't want to be afraid of you anymore. And I think that if you can show me the real you, not just the parts you've been wanting me to see, we can take our relationship to the next level."

It sounded better when she had rehearsed it in her head, but he obviously doesn't care. His eyes had started to glaze over the minute she had used the words 'us' and 'relationship' in the same sentence. He refocuses and their eyes remain ensnared within each other for a little longer, and she once again finds herself startled by their intensity.

It's not until he breaks away from her gaze to look down at their conjoined hands in which she feels like she can breathe again.

Kai sighs deeply, her eyes track his broad shoulders hunching and falling in his suit jacket.

"I-I don't know, Bonnie. I don't want to hurt you."

Now he's the one looking at her unguardedly, his face undoubtedly worried, his brows furrowed, like he wants to pull away from her but can't.

Once upon a time, she would've been surprised and skeptical at his words, but she knows now that he really means it this time.

This will not do.

She needs him to be completely on board with this if her plan was to work. Getting him hungry and emotionally vulnerable was just the first part, making him _want _to bite her was the finisher.

So she bites her lip, looks up at him from under long lashes, and allows her gaze to trail carefully over the hard and sculpted lines of his face.

Her fingers go to stroke the inside of his palm, slowly, _sensually_.

She watches his Adam's apple bob heavily in his throat.

Her voice comes out soft and slippery, but dangerous.

"What if I..._want _you to hurt me?"

The worried look on his face vanishes immediately.

Gray eyes turn molten black.

She can practically hear the groan bubbling in the depths of his throat.

She's not quite sure if it's hunger or anger that's flickered across his face. Hardened eyes glare at her like he wants nothing more than to rip into her skin like a savage.

She knows immediately that both their minds had traveled to that night where he'd breathed sinful things into her ears while playing with her clit. He had warned her about his fantasies of hurting her then, and he only had himself to blame for allowing her to utilize that to her advantage.

"Bonnie I—"

She brings her mouth to the shell of his ear, and makes sure her hot breath curls and licks around the sensitive skin. She doesn't allow their bodies to touch, not yet. They're just a hair's breadth away, because she knows that the lack of contact will only make him want her more.

She allows herself to breathe deeply, inhaling his masculine scent, if just for a moment. To calm herself before the storm.

"Let's go home, Kai."

.

.

They stand before the king bed, both still in their dress attire, the distilled light from the moon bathes the dark room in an eerie glow.

Bonnie moves to unlatch her Gram's necklace from her chest and places it neatly on the comforter before turning back to Kai.

She's silent as she grabs one of his large hands to place itself gently on the side of her throat, and almost shivers at the contact.

He's been unbearably quiet this entire time, his piercing eyes haven't left hers all the while, and she refuses to be the first to break the stare.

Instead of digging his finger tighter around the flesh of her throat like she expects him to, he silently moves his hand to cup the side of her face.

His fingers come to brush the same tendril of hair curled around her cheekbone that Damon had earlier. The thought causes her stomach to churn uncomfortably. His gaze flickers back to her, deep contemplation written clearly across his face.

"I don't know—"

"—You said earlier that you wanted me to trust you." She cuts him off a little bit more aggressively than she had meant to, her voice biting strongly through the clarified silence of the hotel room.

"I am _giving_ you that chance to prove yourself," This time, she makes her voice softer, more sympathetic.

His gaze detaches from hers and he stares off again, into the distance, most likely looking at nothing as he does. Her heart beats soundly in her own ears, the blood in her veins throbbing baitedly in the silence. As if hearing this, his eyes travel back to refocus on hers and they're hardened. His lips tighten into a grim line.

He speaks slowly, carefully.

"If I do lose control, promise me you'll try as hard as you can to get free."

_I don't think you'll need to worry about that part. _

She almost wants to smile.

His eyes search hers again, looking for an answer, so she lets him.

"Trust me, if blood sharing feels as good as people say it will, then you'll have nothing to worry about."

He doesn't look fully convinced, so she steps into him, their bodies aren't touching, but she brings a hand to slither up the back of his neck and sink into his hair. She watches his eyes slip shut at the sensation of her fingers digging into his scalp. She gently guides his head towards the slant of her neck, right near the collarbone.

His breath hovers like a whisper of flames over her exposed throat. His warm lips brush against the skin; once, causing the skin there to flush, and the second time causing her to release a stilted breath. Her eyes slip shut in anticipation of what's to come. Of what _she_ will do to him.

But he suddenly yanks himself away from her. The coldness she feels at his absence is jarring. Her green eyes snap open to see him stumbling away.

"Why-why'd you stop?"

_No, no no no no! _

She wants to scream at him for not following the trajectory of her plan. She wants to scream at herself for allowing her body to keep reacting so willingly to his.

Her eyes narrow as she corners in on him, following his stuttering steps and closing the lost distance determinedly. She _will_ get this to work if it's the last thing she does.

"I-it's just—you almost smell _too _good. I don't trust myse—"

She grabs the sides of his face and slams her lips into his before he can finish the sentence.

Kissing Kai Parker is somehow everything and not at all like how she expected it to feel.

She feels as though she's fuzed to him. Every single part of her body has compacted itself into the hard planes of his. He had frozen at first, his lips had remained unmoving and shocked still against her determined ones. And then, it was like something broke within him, he lurched forwards so he could press himself more heavily into her, his arms wrapped themselves tightly around her waist, and his lips began to move fervently to match her intensity.

He's greedy with his kisses, she's come to realize.

He slants his mouth over hers, domineering and persistent, his tongue cajoling and lapping and sucking on her lower one until she has no choice but to open her mouth so that his tongue can plunge comfortably into it. She feels that familiar heat start up, warm and unyielding in her stomach. She almost feels overwhelmed and startled by how much she revels in it as he hunches his back to get closer to her still.

She has to remind herself that the soft feel of his mouth devouring hers isn't what she's here for. She wills her stomach to stop flipping with arousal and the heat to stop flushing in her veins, and instead detaches her lips from his to brush against the stubble of his cheek. His head drops easily into the crook of her shoulder, his own lips going to suck and swirl his tongue on the skin there.

So she arches her neck even more, exposing every inch of herself to the beast she knows she's steadily awakening.

"Please," She says it breathily and desperately, like she needs to feel his fangs sink into her neck more than he does.

Kai groans, it's a low rumble that travels straight to her groin. And she sort of wants to kill him for throwing her body off track for the second time. But she reminds herself to be patient.

She's taken off guard by the sudden puncture of his sharp canines into her skin. She had expected there would be more contemplation and grappling on his part, more hesitation. It hurts, his torrid lips fuzing to her neck to suck the blood swirling hotly in her veins makes her magic flare in protest.

His cock stiffens against her stomach almost immediately.

Her heart pounds obtrusively in her ears. Everything in her body screams, her survival instincts ignite with the need to push him away. Instead, she fights against it, her own hands travel upwards to tangle in his hair, pressing his lips so deeper into her skin that she can feel them burn too. Every last inch of his body is touching hers.

He moans loudly, one hand comes to grip bruisingly against her hip bone and the other comes to cradle her neck to press closer to his mouth. Their magic intertwines in a dangerous dance, she feels as though hers is close to being ensnared.

He takes and he keeps taking, the same greediness that'd bled through while he was devouring her lips translates clearly to his strain to keep guzzling her blood.

After a few moments of her blood being suctioned from her body, she feels her head start to cloud, the pain from his fangs breaking into her skin has started to settle into a dull ache, her hand begins to loosen its tight hold on the tendrils of his soft hair. And almost as if Kai feels it too, he begins to loosen his hold on her.

Her heart catches.

Fighting through the haziness the blood loss is giving her and with renewed determination, she grips onto his hair even tighter and forces his mouth back onto her throat.

Whatever self control he'd been harnessing earlier, slips away into a depleted fizzle of nothingness.

Their magic continues to entangle, except this time, hers is trying to escape on reflex, while his only grows stronger. Her heart flutters now, but just barely in her chest, trying feebly to keep up with the amount of blood being continuously taken from her.

When her arms finally drop from his shoulders from the exertion, she knows then, that she's in the endgame. She begins to fight against him, her arms weakly flop and pound against his solid and unyielding chest. And it's sort of terrifying, how unaffected he is by her attempt to get his attention.

She knows in the back of her mind though, that she doesn't need to be afraid. Instead, she causes her voice to croak in an attempt to let out a scream from her mangled vocal chords.

She knows the exact moment he realizes his mistake.

His body slackens against her, his hands still their bruising grasp on her hip and throat. As he hurries to detract his fangs, she makes sure to drag her neck against the pointed edge of his teeth. It's painful and hurts like hell, but she needs his feed to be sloppy, needs her skin to open up jagged and scarred so that more blood falls for him to see it seep onto her dress.

She allows her body to relax and slip through his shaking grasp. Her body slams into the floor hard, and she sees stars explode her own vision and her eyes shut, the air knocking slightly out of her lungs.

She should be dead.

Instead she just feels weak. Except, she doesn't feel weak enough to not accomplish the rest of what she'd set out to do. The dark spell she had done so long ago in the restroom of Klaus' mansion whispers against her skin as a safety net, successfully preventing her from slipping into eternal darkness.

Kai had nearly drained her completely.

"Fuck. No no no. Bonnie. Please wake up," She hears his frantic voice echo numbly in her ears. Her eyes flutter open, but all she can see is red seeping into the red.

Kai refocuses in the center of her vision and he looks crazed, all wide-eyed with pupils blown and bloody hands running through his own hair and smearing the crimson liquid of her essence across his face.

She chances one last glance at him, watches bloody hands reaching out towards her to stem her own bleeding before muttering the spell Lucy had shown her.

In the night, under the blood and the lulling pull of the moon, she escapes to safety.

And so she leaves him in their hotel suite, alone with only the single cry of his own shock ringing in the still air.

.

.

His fingers pass through nothingness.

One minute, she was there, bleeding and bruised on the ground below him. His fingers had reached out desperately to quell the wound that he himself had torn into her. And the next minute, she had disappeared through thin air without a trace.

He shouldn't have lied to Bonnie earlier when he'd told her that he was no longer a monster. Because he was still a monster. He was even worse than what he'd used to be. Because at least then, he wasn't hiding under false pretenses and feelings from preventing him from thinking and _doing _fucked up things. No, he was a monster, and he had paid for it.

He was right not to trust himself around her. He had _gorged _himself on her blood. And the worst part was that he didn't want to stop, not until every last drop of nectar was sucked from her skin.

He had wanted to tell her then, why he was so worried about hurting her. That if anything ever happened to her because of him, he'd be destroyed. It would _kill him. _And if it didn't, he would do it himself. Because while somber, it was true. He didn't have any other purpose to stay alive if not for her. He had no real coven to look after, and his family didn't want anything to do with him. He only had her. He is no longer interested in playing the long game. He's sick of pretending she doesn't mean everything to him, because she does. He doesn't care about bending her to his will now that he knows she can be ripped from his grasp so easily.

Because now, he had lost the one thing that had ever _truly_ mattered to him.

The screaming cry that exits his lungs is harrowing and ear splitting and intrinsically devastated.

His fist flies into the concrete wall, breaking every single bone in his hand.

Except that he can't even _feel_ the pain anymore. His heart is numbed—it had been encased in an icey horror the moment he had seen what he'd done to her.

He should've stopped the minute he heard her heartbeat becoming fainter in his ears. He thought he had tried to at one point, but something was keeping him there, pulling him in to guzzle more of her sweet blood. The bloodlust he had felt was the most overwhelming sensation he had ever felt in his entire life. The rich and flavorful witches blood soaked and quenched his throat in the sweetest ambrosia. The pleasure had flooded through every nerve in his entire body, all the way done to his toes. And the best part was, it had seemed never ending.

He had been ripped out of his bloodied heaven and thrown back into the hard planes of reality once he had heard her frightened scream crackle faintly over the blood rushing in his own ears.

Seeing her helpless and dying on the ground by his own hand was not something he hasn't seen before. But looking at her this time, and seeing the dark red soaked along the side of her gorgeous dress was _horrifying_. The fear that had swept through him was devastating, his lungs tightened and his entire body seized with cold, as if _he_ was the one who had been practically ripped to shreds.

He couldn't even think straight. In that moment, all he wanted to do was to make sure she stayed alive. And looking back on it, he can't even remember if those hauntingly gorgeous green eyes had blinked up at him or if they had remained stagnant and unmoving like the rest of her. Everything in his head is telling him that he killed her, and yet everything in his body is screaming at him to try and find her.

He doesn't care, he decides. If Bonnie's dead, he'll drag her corpse and revitalize it through any mode of dark magic he can find. Bonnie was his. She said so. He'll find her dead or alive. Even if he has to rip himself apart and put himself together to do it. Even if it drives him into inherent madness.

His plan for her, for _them_ is crumbling beneath his fingers. He can't let that happen. He _refuses_ to.

He slits his palm open with the blunt edge of his nail. More of his blood leaks onto the marble floor below him, to join the red already his feet. He summons a map from one of the drawers and lays its crinkled form over the blood speckled bed next to her necklace. He places the gold necklace gently and carefully over the map and then walks over to his closet to pull the black banded daylight ring she had made for him from the box on his armoire and also places it in the center of the map for good measure.

He allows himself to steady his breathing, dampen the paranoia and agony threatening to cut through him, as flashes of her horror-stricken face flickers through the pounding of his head. He still feels on edge, his body jittery and unable to completely still as he raises a shaking hand to drip a single perfect drop onto the map of Mystic Falls. He closes his eyes instead, wills his shoulders to stop trembling and his heart to stop beating painfully.

He mutters the locator spell in his head, feeling his magic latch onto the items sprawled along the map before traveling to sink into the drop of blood.

His eyes flutter open, and he watches the drop of blood lay stagnant and unmoving on top of the paper map.

Bonnie Bennett is nowhere to be found.


	7. Bird in a Gilded Cage

**A Bird in a Gilded Cage**

* * *

The warm wind whips against the back of his coat.

His feet drag along the empty sidewalk in front of Whitmore college.

He's drunk.

Like, inconceivably so.

He guesses he could say that he's been that way for the past few days; his mind has fogged over itself, drowning and spiraling into a pile of ash and depression.

He's ignored the almost obscene amount of text messages he's received from Lily Salvatore. He knows he wouldn't care what she had to say to him either way.

She's no doubt been searching for him, maybe as baselessly as he's been searching for Bonnie.

He hadn't planned on getting inebriated, but somewhere along the way he'd found that alcohol (specifically tequila) did a bang up job smoothening the edge of the blunted despair that had seated itself right in the pit of his stomach the longer he searched for Bonnie to no avail.

He hasn't technically _seen _or spoken to anyone since Klaus' gala, so it is entirely by happenstance that he runs into Nora of all people.

She's sitting lonely on a barren bench, her hair getting whipped and mussed by the lukewarm wind. He doesn't miss the red outlining her eyes that are staring droopily into space. And normally, he would walk right past her, wouldn't even bother trying to fill the empty spot next to her with his presence, but it's 7 am and he's _exhausted_. And there's a seat open on a stagnant bench calling for him to finally rest.

She doesn't look at him when he sits down, his body settles heavily besides her.

"Rough day?" He speaks first.

His throat feels dry and scraggly like sandpaper, probably from the lack of use after screaming it hoarse on the first night of Bonnie's disappearance.

"She broke up with me."

Nora doesn't look at him, her voice is soft and barely carries over to him, but he watches as a delicate tear wells up at the edge of her eyelid, laying on the red rim. She looks almost as exhausted and deflated as he probably does.

A pathetic pair of Heretics they make.

"I'm sorry," he says, because it's the right thing to say.

He feels a ghosting of sympathy for her. Nora just lost someone she cares about. Kai's been getting to know the feeling a bit _too_ well.

Kai turns to look off to the rustling trees in the park before him as quietness blankets them, his mind starts to fog in over itself again.

His phone vibrates then, cutting through the somber silence. He doesn't move to reach for it.

"You should really check your phone, you know. Lily's been trying to reach you. We've moved."

He wearily turns back to the Heretic who is now watching him curiously. She continues to fill him in.

"...Out of the boarding house, " his mind snags onto that bit of information, stilted abruptly as Nora continues unperturbed by his pause, "Elijah made a deal with Lily, she hands over the phoenix stone, and we get to live in the mansion Klaus bought for his gala."

He's not even that surprised that the originals were able to pry the phoenix stone from Lily's cold undead hands. He's just shocked that he hadn't been the one to give into spilling the info, Klaus and Kol had been practically prodding him all night about it.

"We're also going to NOLA to look for the ascendant."

"When?"

"Next week. You should come. Or not, it may distract you from...whatever you're going through."

Nora lets out a little puff of air and turns to stare drearily off into the distance once more, her intrigue with his lack of knowledge for the things happening around him waning.

"I doubt that," he mutters it under his breath, though he knows she's heard him.

He leaves Nora shortly afterwards, with her gaze still staring out at nothing, most likely reminiscing about her now ex girlfriend.

His mind fog begins to clear the longer he walks, though he is still very much drunk. The image of the boarding house appears clean and crisp in his vision, his body filled with a newly found vigor. He decides that now is the time to check the one place he had been mistakenly avoiding this entire time.

It's time he found what was rightfully his.

.

.

She wakes up in the guest bedroom in the boarding house.

It's where she's been hiding for the past few days.

They know from Lily that the rest of the Heretics have been looking for Kai in order to leave for NOLA, to no avail. She's been keeping herself hidden too, Lucy's cloaking spell has clearly done the job.

_Maybe a bit too well_, she thinks.

Apart from the dark magic she had used to prevent her own death from blood loss, the spell cloaking her location was strong enough for her to not feel the familiar pull of the earth calling to her magic. Her magic feels stunted, like a layer of film is covering it, halting it from spreading upwards to the surface of her skin. But that doesn't matter, Lucy told her the spell will wear off after a couple of days, and from the consistent flickering of burning embers she's been feeling in her gut, she knows she doesn't have much more time until the spell wears off and Kai comes snooping at the boarding house.

She can't help but think back to what happened after she had last left Kai.

_She's only slightly disoriented as the world rights itself in her fuzzy vision. _

_She knows she's in Damon's bed from the feel of the black silk sheets sliding against her skin. _

_As her memories of the previous night come flooding back to her, a hand immediately rises to graze the side of her neck. The skin there is completely unblemished. _

"_I gave you some blood." _

_Normally, she'd be startled at the sudden voice cutting through her thoughts, but her body feels languid and sluggish; her reactions slow. She wearily turns to the voice instead. Damon sits on the sleek desk chair across from her, he looks eerily out of place in his own bedroom; his eyes somber and intent as they focus on her. Bonnie's outrage at the notion of being force fed blood drains quite quickly out of her body the longer she looks at the worry lines creasing Damon's forehead. _

"_You know I don't like that," she meant to say it sternly, but her voice comes out weak and soft. Though she knows that she is healed on the outside, she still feels quite lightheaded and drained from all the magic she's expended, like she could pass out at any moment. _

_Damon sighs, running his hands through jet black locks. His jean-clad legs uncross on the wooden chair and he leans forwards, steadying yet another look that is incredibly indiscernible yet manages to pierce straight through her. _

"_I wasn't just going to let you bleed out, Bon Bon. You barely made it to the boarding house." _

"_I would've been fine," she mutters, convincing no one but herself. She sways a bit in the bed, her fingers coming to inconspicuously grip the silken sheets in order to ground herself. She can't bring herself to meet his gaze again. _

_The intensity in which he stares at her is unnerving. She can't believe that even after all they've been through, she still finds herself perturbed by him. She's well aware of the passion and rigor for which he cares for things, like he's always cared for Elena. She just never expected that same sentiment to extend to her. _

_Another bout of exhaustion sweeps through her and this time, her grip on the bed sheets are not enough to save her as she nearly collapses into herself. Damon is next to her, his arms encompassing her weakened state in a flash, but she barely registers his presence. She is just so __**tired**_ _of constantly being physically and emotionally drained for the sake of everyone else. _

_She thinks about how close she was to death yet again. How even now, even after she gained a hardened shell from what Kai's put her through, she can't rely on anyone else to protect herself from the worst of it. _

_She can't even rely on herself to do that. _

_The tears well in the corner of her eye before she can stop them. And once the first falls, the rest are soon to follow. _

_She's not unfamiliar with this feeling; the loneliness, and feeling as though she does so much for everyone and doesn't receive anything back. But this time, it's a little different. Damon is there, and his warm hands brush the tears from her cheeks. He cups her head and presses her into the curve of his neck, murmuring "I know" and "You did so well, Bon," into her ear. She's surprised that his comfort actually works. _

_It feels like it's been hours, but she finally detaches a bit from the safety of Damon's cocoon; her lips about to form the words 'thank you' but her voice dries in her throat upon meeting Damon's eyes. _

_She doesn't know why, but she thinks about Kai the more she takes in the soft yet intent expression plaguing Damon's face. How Kai's eyes would dilate so fully when he was around her, he'd look at her with pouty lips parted and waiting to drink up anything she said, just like Damon's were now. But Damon's eyes were so, so blue in comparison. And the more she stares, the more the ice blue bleeds into gray until she can't tell what's real anymore. _

_A face gets closer to hers, and she doesn't know what's come over her. She's drowning; his eyes are too consuming, too intent on focusing on hers. She's still unequivocally lightheaded and airy_—_she doesn't feel like herself. But her eyelids flutter on their own accord, and soon she feels the slight brush of his own lashes against the swell of her cheek bones. Damon's familiar scent fills her wholly and completely. _

_Parted lips ghost against hers, their warmth brush over the top of her parted cupid's bow lip. _

_They brush once, twice, before covering hers completely. _

"_Damon." _

_Stefan's voice, stern and clear cuts meanly through the static they've gathered. Her eyes open, wide and wild as her focus narrows in on Stefan's form in the doorway. Embarrassment and shame fills her immediately as she jerks out of Damon's grasp. Stefans lips are glued into a thin line, a calmly acerbate look on his face. Bonnie can practically feel the disappointment etching off of Stefan, though he is not even looking at her. Stefan stares directly at Damon, like Bonnie does not exist to him. And the slowness in which Damon removes his palm from her face makes her want to scream, especially when she can see Stefan's green orbs tracking his every movement. _

_Damon finally stands, casually and calmly making his way to the doorway, as if he weren't just caught with his lips on his girlfriend's best friend. He turns once more in Bonnie's direction, but she's long averted her eyes from either of their directions. She can't even stand to look at them. _

_Damon's gentle tone infiltrates her just as harshly despite her blatant ignorance of him._

"_Get some more rest, Bon. Caroline will call you down for breakfast later." _

_Bonnie offers a curt nod and nothing more, her lungs practically burning with the effort to keep her breath in, in the hopes that she doesn't say or __**do**_ _anything more idiotic than what she had just done. _

_She hears faintly, as Damon walks down the hallway and Stefan trails off after him, Stefan's voice calling his name once more. _

_She has no doubt in her mind that he ignores it too. _

_._

_._

He rings the doorbell to the boarding house to be polite, though every fiber of his being begs him to rip the great wooden door straight off its hinges and trudge right into the Salvatore mansion.

It figures then, that Damon would be the one to answer the door.

Kai watches impatiently as Damon registers his presence, icy blue eyes immediately narrowing in suspicion.

"What are _you_ doin' here?"

He can already feel his grip and self control slipping steadily, much quicker and recklessly than he had expected it to. He had hoped that it would've taken longer for the alcohol to push him completely off the edge of composure.

But he feels as though he is in a feral state, and he simply cannot stand looking at Damon's face longer than absolutely necessary.

Kai pushes past Damon with no preamble, and strides into the kitchen to find Elena drinking orange juice by the kitchen table.

"Where is she?" he demands it loud enough to catch blondie-number-one and blondie-number-two's attention by their seats in the living room.

His frustration grows the longer they continue to stare at him wide eyed and gaping like goldfish, until he hears the screeching of a chair sound from behind him. He turns quickly, his eyes zeroing in on the doppelganger who's currently stalking towards him like he's some wounded animal she's found on the side of the road.

"Isn't she supposed to be with you?" Eleanor, Elena, _whatever _her name was, says it carefully and slowly, like he's a child, and it makes him want to rip her throat out.

"Clearly not," he grits out, barely keeping his cool. Just barely.

His mind starts to scatter wildly as he comes to the realization that they may not know where Bonnie is.

His attention settles on the bar table in the living room. He vamp speeds there before shakily gripping the largest bottle of alcohol he can find, aggressively popping the cap off and tilting his head back so the liquid can splash and burn its way sloppily down his throat. His eyes water from the sheer water to alcohol content heating his insides.

"Well, none of us have seen her since the wedding. Are you sure she's not back at the hotel? Or Whitmore?"

With his back still turned from them, he slams the now half-empty bottle back onto the bar counter and only barely hears the way the girls flinch at the loud noise it makes.

He wishes in that moment that none of them were vampires. He knows Elena isn't, but that's besides the point.

It's because he can't even tell who's lying and who isn't. Despite Elena's very human heartbeat that does nothing but pound a blurry headache into his inebriated skull, there's nothing but static and silence around him now, and it only adds to the growing frustration unfurling deep and wildly in his chest.

Elena's voice sure _sounds _genuinely confused, but he's so drunk and scatterbrained that when he turns around to face them, he can't even discern what expression it is on her face that he's looking at.

"What do you think?" He growls instead, his hand coming to clumsily grip the bottle of (bourbon?) as he stalks towards the fireplace.

He knows he must look crazy.

He can see now as his fuzzy vision starts to clear, the apprehensive looks exchanged between the two blondes, and the thinly veiled surprise on Damon's face at his obviously unhinged composure. Damon slowly steps a bit closer to him, now fully in the living room. He sees blondie-number-two carefully stand from his seated position on the couch out of the corner of his eye.

The hand not currently holding a glass bottle clenches at his side. Damon notices.

"Hey, we said she's not here, buddy."

"Why don't I believe you?"

Kai's voice drips with discontempt, and he doesn't even attempt to hide it.

He's already thinking of places in this house that he hasn't checked yet. He can't _feel _her here, but this is his only hope.

If she's not here, then it's over for him.

"Well, she isn't."

Caroline, blondie-number-one, finally speaks up. The obvious concern on her face draws her eyebrows together—he thinks, for the sake of _his _wellbeing—and it makes him want to scream.

"That's funny, I don't remember asking you," he practically snarls.

He's done playing 20 questions. He will find Bonnie, and he will find her _here _if it's the last thing he does.

The frustration seated in him furls and unfurls faster and faster.

Brooding-hero-hair apparently didn't like the tone in which he spoke to the blonde because suddenly, his vision is being monopolized by the older vampire.

"Hey, don't talk to her like tha—"

A strong hand comes to push lightly against his chest as a warning, and that's when he snaps completely.

Kai doesn't even need to lift a finger as his magic unprompted grips onto the precious air that had been swirling in Stefan's lungs and pulls upwards.

Stefan immediately crumples to the ground, his face turning a horrid purple color as Caroline and Elena's screams of shock echo far too distantly to be of concern in his ears.

"Where is she!"

Kai grabs onto the closest thing he can find in his outrage. His fingers grip onto the large bookcase to the right of him and sends it crashing to the floor, he can hear Stefan still struggling for breath in the background of it all, the grip of his magic hasn't let up.

He hears Damon rush towards him before he sees it.

A low roar erupts in his chest, the veins under his eyes begin to squirm as his gums push out pointed fangs. The hand still circled taut against the bourbon bottle crashes against the wall, glass shards fly everywhere in a flurry of imperilment. His other hand grips against Damon's neck, fingernails digging sharply into the skin as he slams his body into the wall across from them, the plaster breaking and denting under his force. Kai's other hand holds the sharpened end of the bourbon bottle into Damon's neck, slowly piercing the reddening and squeezed skin under his fingers.

He doesn't bother using his magic with Damon.

His anger fuels his sheer power, and he doesn't even need to turn around to give Caroline an aneurysm upon hearing her effort to charge at him. Elena's still crouched on the patterned rug by Stefan's writhing body, desperately attempting to somehow get him to breathe again.

"Kai!"

That single voice calling his name pierces through him so sharply that every single drop of air drains from his body.

His hands immediately drop from Damon, his body slowly turning in the voice's direction.

And then, he sees her.

The world _crumbles_ around him.

There's nothing except her.

She stands in the doorway in a short black jean skirt and long-sleeved sweater, green eyes wide and frightened as she takes in the scene before her.

The fear bludgeoning her expression has never made her look more beautiful.

"Bonnie."

He breathes her name like a prayer.

The bourbon in his hand drops and shatters on the floor, slicing neatly against his palm. He takes a few stumbling steps in her direction.

She's still frozen, a look of apprehension and slight horror on her face as her eyes circle the destruction behind him. A large crater of relief fills and wells within him so completely that it hurts.

He almost gets close enough to his destination, but that unfurling ball of anger in his chest had demolished itself so harshly and suddenly that his body trembled with the sheer effort of keeping himself upright. And then he drops to his knees, one after the other.

His eyes start to water and burn again, and this time, he doesn't think it's from the alcohol.

His knees drag against broken glass as he crawls the last few inches into her trajectory. He's so relieved to find her live body, that he doesn't even register the shocked expression on her face that had focused back in his direction and immediately settled into a cold mask.

"I missed—"

His voice is so pathetically raw and devastated. His bloodied fingers try to curl and snake up the back of her skirt-clad thigh to pull her closer to him. They brush the warm bare skin there briefly before she takes a large step backwards, causing him to stumble, his hands fanning flat on the ground on top of shards of broken glass.

"Get up," she says. Cold and distant, not anything like the Bonnie he had invented in his head these past few days he'd spent searching for her.

He blinks a few times, though not quite coming back to himself. Because her tone is so devastatingly cruel and horrible, it causes his heart to compress and shrivel even more than it already has, that deep crater of warmth and relief that had filled him immediately turning cold.

He's not sure why then, upon raising his head and gazing at the unfiltered venom lacing the expression on her face, that a harsh lash of arousal whips straight at his core.

He decides then, that he doesn't even care if she still despises him.

Instead, he tries to open his mouth again, just to say 'I missed you' one more time, despite knowing it's the exact opposite of what she wants to hear, but she beats him to the punch.

"If you want to ever see me again, then you're going to tell us a few things."

.

.

It's easier than she thought, getting Kai to reveal everything Lily's been planning for the past few weeks. He'd sobered up rather quickly.

They find out about the stone, about Julian and Oscar, and Enzo, about the deal Lily made with the originals, about NOLA, and about Lily's supposed plan of making Mystic Falls a 'Heretic town'.

Luckily for her, Damon and Stefan do most of the questioning.

Something about looking at Kai in his state feels blatantly wrong. She'd felt nauseous and uneasy the moment they'd sat down on the couch to prod him for information. And even though she knew exactly what she'd been getting into, the thought of demanding answers from him like this makes her want to vomit.

It had all been too _real_.

The feral, unhinged bloody and monstrous expression that had been on his face as he pressed broken glass to Damon's neck, his pleading eyes as he still tried to warm himself off her apparent coldness. She couldn't even focus on anything but the way he had said her name upon seeing her again. The utter _devotion_ behind the sentiment was sickening, and it distracted her for the entirety of his questioning.

She hadn't thought that he would be in that bad of a state upon finding him. His eyes were bloody and bloodshot, dried tear stains streaking his cheeks, bags and sheer exhaustion weighing his face. His clothing stained with alcohol as he attempted to rip apart the boarding house in search of her. The way he had absolutely crumpled upon seeing her again, his hands shakily and desperately trying to reach her.

He looked _terrible_. And _she_ did that to him.

So when all the questioning is over, and Damon and Stefan were thoroughly satisfied with the information they've gained, she makes it apparent that she is not going back to the hotel with him.

But when he begs her to stay the night at the boarding house, something in her heart seizes.

He had looked like someone had crushed his soul, put it back together only in order to rip it apart once more. That someone was her.

And seeing how lost and depraved he looked upon seeing her was _almost_ enough to make up for the absolute hell he'd put her through.

So she decides that she can afford to be a bit more merciful because after all, she is _not_ the same type of monster that he is.

.

.

She almost wants to curse her luck that the guest bedroom she's been staying in on the top floor is directly next to the only other free bedroom in the house; Damon and Stefan's "uncle's" old room. But she tells herself that it won't matter either way, because she doesn't plan on seeing Kai again tonight.

She can finally stop with the act, she thinks. No more feigned niceties between them are necessary. Because it's obvious now who really has the upper hand. She's got him hook line and sinker, she no longer needs to play pretend in order to preserve his feelings. Especially not when he'll be dead soon anyways.

She had been hell bent on avoiding him, at least as much as possible before she went to bed, but things never really turn out in her favor to begin with.

She catches him as he's exiting the shared bathroom, they both freeze in the dimly lit hallway like deer in headlights.

He's wearing what she thinks might be Damon and Stefan's uncle Zach's pajamas. A ratty old T-shirt that hangs loosely off his broad shoulders and baggy gray sweatpants.

He looks...better.

His eyes are no longer red rimmed, though the bags are still prominent. His hair isn't the wild mess it once was, his stubble still neatly trimmed, and she can tell he's been freshly showered. She herself hasn't even gotten changed out of her everyday wear yet.

"Bonnie," he says her name with eyebrows raised and his mouth slightly agape, like he's surprised to see her in the very place she had been staying this entire time.

"Kai," She responds stiffly, and promptly attempts to make her way around his tall frame and to the shared bathroom to no avail. He's there, blocking her path, and a familiar slither of annoyance runs up her spine at his inability to take a hint, especially when she sees the intent look he's fastening on her. His eyes search hers in the way that never fails to make her uncomfortable.

"I've missed you, so much, Bon."

She presses her lips together. She's not going to say anything. She doesn't know why, but playing the aloof and uncaring part is more difficult than she thought, especially when she still feels a sliver of nausea when she thinks about the look on his face when he'd first saw her again after thinking he'd killed her.

Because the unfortunate truth was, she _had _missed him. It wasn't just by coincidence that she had thought about him so much the past few days she had been hiding from him. Feeling the guilt seep into her the longer she thought about how she left him. Thinking about his arms wrapped around her at night. Her _magic_ coiling around his. Even in moments, when she was with Damon, she couldn't help but think about Kai. He had infiltrated her mind and her thoughts like a sickness, and she had hoped that after their plan was over and they got what they needed, it would be better. She was completely wrong.

But even as her stomach flops from looking at the vulnerably hopeful look on his face, she knows that anything she may or may not feel for Kai Parker needs to be left in the past.

It will only leave _her_ hurt.

So instead of answering like part of her desperately wants to, she steps to move around him towards her destination, but he's speaking again.

"What? No, _I missed you too?" _

"I-I didn't," she says quietly, now _really _resisting the urge to meet his eyes.

"Now, we both know you're not _that _good of a liar, Bon."

The sheer confidence spilling off his comment gives her pause, but before she can linger on the implications of his words, they hear the sound of soft footsteps making their way down the hall. A large hand grabs onto her arm, and the dimly lit walkway is suddenly spinning in her vision.

"Kai what are you—"

"—Shhh. There's someone coming. "

She's not sure how or why she's gotten into the position of her chest crushed up against the corner of a wall, and a Heretic pressed against her back, but she's never had the best luck to begin with.

She doesn't even have time to voice her indignation once she hears Kai murmur a cloaking spell, his breath lingering far too close to the skin of her ear for comfort. However, her concern with her predicament quickly diminishes once she sees who it is that was walking down the hallway.

Everything in Bonnie's body tenses when she sees Stefan pass by them to silently stop by the closed door to her guest bedroom. He raises a hand as if to knock before letting out a deep sigh before ultimately lowering it. He turns, and Bonnie and Kai watch his sweatshirt clad body disappear into the narrowed darkness of the hall.

"Weird," Kai says.

But it's not weird. She knew exactly why Stefan wanted to speak to her. It had been a few days, long enough for her and Damon to be cool around each other, and long enough for them to know that Stefan wouldn't say anything to Elena, but also just the right amount of time for Stefan to come and check in on her. To berate her or set the record straight, she doesn't know.

"Y-yeah," is all Bonnie can respond with. Her voice crackled with nervousness at Stefan's unexpected presence, her throat had gotten so dry, she could barely even speak without her heart feeling like it was going to burst straight out of the cavity of her chest.

She's still breathing heavy, and it's not until a few seconds after she makes sure Stefan has completely disappeared down the hallway in which she realizes the exact _position _she is in.

"Okay, you can let go of me now," she says it sternly, and mildly annoyed that Kai had somehow yet again twisted this situation in his favor, the entirety of his body is pressed against her back, and the feeling shouldn't be familiar to her, but it is. She's not as disgusted by his presence as she very well should be.

There's a large gap of silence in which Bonnie thinks that Kai hadn't heard her. She's about to repeat herself when he sighs heavily, burrowing closer into her and causing the hair on her neck to stand.

"Hmm but I don't think I want to," he breathes it into her ear, and despite herself, a slight shiver runs salaciously down her spine.

She doesn't know what it is about him, his uncanny ability to make his voice _drip_ with sex is far too dangerous for it to be enjoyable. And yet, she does not yank herself out of his grasp like she should have.

"And I don't think you want me to either. We both know I've learned my lesson."

He's mistaken.

Him losing control and biting her is not what she's afraid of this time; she knew that that had only happened under manipulated circumstances to begin with. It's the fact that she finds herself completely speechless and rooted to the spot at his proximity.

Her brain completely screeched to a halt the minute he had somehow pressed his body even further into her, his pelvis coming in direct contact with the jean-skirt material covering her ass. She bites down furiously on her lower lip to prevent herself from gasping, but she can't disguise the way her heart pounds from the vampire who is clearly listening to her every move.

"See, I know you've missed me, deep down at least. You just don't want to say anything."

She can feel the smile curling around his lips as he continues to speak into her ear with that soft, velvety voice.

"But that is a-okay with me, Bonster."

His finger trails up and down the bare skin on the back of her thigh, brushing against the thin material of her underwear. Her stomach clenches and a trail of goosebumps erupt in his wake. She can't help the low ache that starts deep in her belly, her skin feels impossibly hot against the cool rings of his fingers circling around the bare skin on her thighs and underneath the curve of her ass.

A whimper desperately wants to erupt from her throat, but it doesn't, not until _after _he speaks again.

"Just let your _cunt _do all the talking for you."

He cups her harshly, her lips let slip a sort of strangled whimper as she feels the warm pad of his tongue lick a straight stripe from the crevice of her shoulder all the way up to the skin behind her ear. Her legs already feel weak, though she knows the worst is yet to come.

Her brain feels dizzy beyond measure, arousal now infiltrates through to her core her in waves.

Kai is dropping to his knees and yanking her panties down to her ankles before she even has time to catch her breath.

No amount of lip biting can prevent the cry that spills from her lips when she feels a scorching hot mouth fuse itself to her bare folds. She can't even berate herself for how easy it was for him to get there, she's just glad that her lust-filled mind still barely latches onto the notion that Kai had cloaked them earlier.

"Fuck," he groans, straight into her center. Her jean skirt scrunches above his head as he buries his face in between her ass cheeks. His fingers dig harshly into the front of her thighs, steadying her against the wall so she doesn't collapse from the sheer fervor in which he licks into her folds.

She's beyond the point of attempting to keep her composure. His tongue is so _hot _and velvety as it alternates between continuously licking taut lines from her clit to the crease of her ass, and dipping itself shallowly in and out of her hole. She knows now that his mission must be to get her to cry out as much as physically possible, because it seems to be working. She already feels like her insides are going to be swollen and ruined by the time he's done with her.

He seems to be enjoying it just as much as she is, if his continuous shuddering and enthusiastic groans are anything to go by. Her face presses into the cool plasture of the wall, hot tears well in the corner of her eyes as she feels her climax building steadily like a blaze of fire deep in her belly.

When she comes the first time, it's explosive. His hot tongue had just licked itself into the puckered hole of her ass, his large fingers coming to piston past the folds of her pussy and to rub and pinch at her clit before dragging his lips downwards to suck harshly at her swollen nub.

Her juices erupt uncontrollably out of her body and streak in ribbons down Kai's face and neck through her climax. She barely has the energy to turn her head to see Kai from over her shoulder; she watches the muscles in his throat contract with the effort to lap everything up.

"Oh my god," he manages to choke out from underneath her, though his voice slightly muffled, "You taste so fucking good." Her heart pounds hotly at the way her body had reacted to his ministrations. That has _never _happened to her before. Normally, she'd be extremely embarrassed by the sheer unbridled response her body had just had, but the fact that it was _Kai_ who had managed to elicit from her, just makes her skin burn that much hotter.

He manages to ring out another mind-numbing orgasm from her cunt, this time with his thumb inserted into her ass while his other fingers pump continuously in and out of her wet folds. Her stomach clenches hard as she comes, her legs tremble with the effort to stand, but Kai is there steadying her before she collapses.

He finally stands up, pressing his very obvious bulge to nestle straight in between her bare ass cheeks, his hands bunching up her skirt around her waist so that he can dry hump her from behind. Her juices dampen the front of his ratty sweatpants, and it's all so erotic and filthy and consuming that she almost doesn't notice him speak again in a low rumble.

"I need to be inside of you. Right now."

She doesn't know what possesses her to agree with him.

All she knows is that she is way beyond the point of no return. If her still sensitive and twitching cunt was anything to go by. He tears the rest of her underwear completely off her ankles, and before she can be outraged by him ripping a pair of perfectly fine underwear, he's vamp speeding them into her guest bedroom.

Kai doesn't even bother taking his shirt off, the only article of clothing they manage to expel in their haste is Bonnie's skirt and their shoes before he's throwing her unceremoniously onto the bed and grabbing her by the ankles to yank her opened legs closer to the edge.

Bonnie watches rapt and kind of hypnotized as he silently unfurls his member from his sweats, the thick mushroom head leaks with precum, the veins protruding from it doing nothing to mask its angry red color bathed purple in the low light. His dick is _huge._ And its sheer length is kind of making her have second thoughts about whether or not she wants to put herself through all of this. Especially when she meets his gray eyes again and watches as he glares at Bonnie's bare cunt with an alarmingly dark look.

Her heart-rate spikes in apprehension.

He looks simultaneously murderous and hungry as he stares at her, and her lustful mind suddenly grounds itself into reality due to his predatory expression triggering her fight or flight response.

But almost as if he can _sense_ her sudden need to scramble away from him, he's stepping closer, and this time, his snake-like eyes latch onto her face, keeping her frozen and still.

He looks... _sociopathic. _

He looks much too like the Kai she remembers from the '94 prison world, the one who took sadistic pleasure in seeing her in pain, and the thought makes her feel nauseous again.

It's moments like these in which she can't believe that she had actually thought that she _missed _being around him.

"Ah ah ah, Bon. You're not having second thoughts are you?"

He sounds far too sure of her answer. Or what he's going to _do_ to her if she does answer.

_Run! Now! _Her mind supplies.

_But he would just catch you, _a dark voice whispers back_. _It's answer rings nothing but the hard truth.

She doesn't know why then, she feels a thrill of heat race straight to her center.

"I'll promise to be on my best behavior." His smooth voice drips ominously down her spine.

They both know it's a lie.

She knows now that she is too frightened to move; the time where her body had been stocked with adrenaline and readied to run had waned. The blood in her veins has turned unbearably warm, her heart rattles uselessly like a hummingbird in her chest, her magic still dampened and flickering with the aftereffects of the cloaking spell.

Her eyes remain unblinking on his, desperately trying to read or scrape for any semblance of humanity he may still have. She sees nothing but darkened irises blown so wide that they dip into never ending black holes.

She doesn't even notice how close he's gotten to her until she feels him press the tip of his cock against the sensitive skin of her still slick folds. And she means to cry out in fear, but she whimpers as a shock of pleasure rocks her instead.

She stays stock still, her legs widening on their own accord. They both look downwards as he rubs and teases her center with his member, getting all the slickened cum from her core to smear across the mushroom head.

Her eyes snap back upwards, just to watch gray orbs roll backwards in his head before settling back on her. His mouth hangs completely agape at the feel of her soft skin sliding against his hardened member, though no sound exits, and he remains eerily silent. When she feels him gently push the wide head past her cervix, her chest seizes, and instead of running like she wants to, her pliant body tries to accommodate the size. Kai's hands come to cup her ass in an attempt to pull her further down his cock, and although he's going at an extremely slow pace, the searing burn that spreads through her is damn near unbearable.

Instead of letting out a cry of pain like she so desperately wants to, she grits her teeth and hisses briefly once her folds slide downwards to envelop around half of his cock, the girth of her own body preventing him from impaling her all the way down to the hilt.

This is as far as she can go, she's sure of it. Kai seems to think so too.

"Oh my god," he speaks softly, the corner of his lip curves upwards in a pleasantly surprised smile, like he's made a new discovery. "You can barely even fucking take it."

She knows that he's mocking her from the way his lips are quirked and his eyes shine, and it makes her body fill hotly with anger. And because she is stubborn above all else, she abruptly grabs onto the back of Kai's thighs in an attempt to force him closer into her.

Kai lets out a surprised groan as she manages to move an inch further down his thick shaft. Her hands immediately grip onto his biceps and then raise to tangle in his hair to steady herself.

The playful smirk on his lips falls immediately and morphs nastily into that hunger-struck murderous glare he had been sporting earlier. She immediately regrets her actions.

Her eyes widen when Kai's hands suddenly come to grip tightly around her neck, he growls as he yanks her slightly hunched body closer to him in one fell swoop, her cunt roughly sliding downwards until his entire length is sheathed within her and the cotton of his shirt brushes against her clit.

She feels as though her entire body is being split in half.

She's in so much pain that her vision blurs, and it takes her a few seconds to realize that it's because of the hot tears that have erupted on the edge of her eyelids. She only slightly prides herself on maintaining silence, though her lower lip feels like it's about to be punctured completely with the sheer force in which she had bitten down on it.

"I'm sorry. Did that hurt, baby?"

He doesn't sound sorry at all, though his fingers did come to brush a few of the tears that had puddled underneath the swell of her cheeks.

It still hurts even as he begins to move. And she sort of wishes she could curl into herself.

She doesn't like having sex with Kai, she decides. Not when she's this vulnerable and bare to his scrutiny. She's never had someone attend to her every movement like he does, he stares unblinking and intently, as her face grimaces with each slow thrust of his large cock into her center.

They both know the exact moment it begins to feel pleasurable for her.

The searing pain she had felt teeters off into a dull ache, a new burning sensation followed by a wave of pleasure so strong it makes her gasp and tug harsher than she had meant to on Kai's hair. Her unintended display of roughness snaps something within Kai because he's suddenly gripping onto her neck with even more fervor, pinning her body to the bed as hunches his back and then propels his own cock downwards to immediately impale and force himself through her insides.

He fucks into her so aggressively that the bedframe pierces into the plaster on the wall behind them, the lightbulb attached to the lampshade next to them immediately bursts.

She comes almost instantly.

They both cry out at the same time at the feeling of her insides clamping viciously down on the throbbing skin of his shaft. Her cunt is still shaking and twitching when he tells her how much of a 'good girl' she's being and how she 'takes him so well' with one hand still clutched around her throat, and the other pinching her nipples through her damp sweater. His incessant coddling really makes her want to slap him upside the head, but she can't even speak. Her breath comes out rough and haggard, and when he starts picking up the pace of his thrusts again, the heady cries and wails he elicits from her become nearly embarassing.

His cock is impaling her so sublimely that every time he pummels into her cervix, her jaw clamps upwards. He has her practically shrieking at each powerful thrust.

Her orgasm hits her so hard this time that she can't even make a sound. Her body convulses and contracts almost violently, her mouth stuck in a permanent 'o' shape before she's coming and dripping all over him. Her velvet insides squeeze tightly against the smooth skin of his cock, thick tears spring to her eyes once more, completely clouding her vision of the sex-crazed man above her.

Her juices explode and flow down her own thighs, she's so thoroughly stimulated that she can barely even hear Kai demanding she say his own name as she comes.

She soon feels his own cock ripple with pleasure from deep inside of her. Kai first lets out a feral yell, sounding as though he's been punched in the stomach as his orgasm grips him. He lets out long tortured moans one after the other as thick spurts of cum paint her soft insides, the pleasant warmth of seemingly neverending long jets of semen making her cunt twitch itself into yet another slight orgasm. Kai's hands come to support his weight by resting them against the soiled bed spread on either side of her head, as the shockwaves continue to wrack his body.

She closes her eyes as her body attempts to catch up with herself, her chest finally not heaving as heavily as it was doing before. She doesn't watch him as he slowly unsheaves his cock from her vaginal canal, but her eyes immediately snap open once more when she feels him plunge back into her, their combined cum leaking and spilling off the edges of their conjoined bodies.

It's not until she registers him continuing to thrust his still taut cock into her when she realizes that she was correct in wanting to run from him the first time.

"P-Please stop, Kai," her voice sounds so weak and raw from getting her brains fucked out, that's she's not even sure that he can hear her. She wants to hate him, she wants to find him repulsive, but there is something about his _disgusting _actions that despite everything, feel absolutely _euphoric._

"No," he growls, the old Kai staring straight into her face. He is no longer the man she could readily blackmail, the cute, awkward and shy person who'd been left speechless at seeing her in a ball gown. No, this was a man who's expression tells her that it'd be no use trying to escape him.

She supposes she deserves it, after all. This was just payback for all the pain she had put him through. It's her fault for stupidly playing right into his hidden sadistic nature to begin with.

He lowers his face towards her, not even to kiss her as she had suspected, but to tug her full bottom lip savagely between his. The action is so erotic that it has her moaning directly in his mouth as his lips form to suckle on her slippery tongue.

Kai's fingers softly trail up her sweater to intentionally dig straight into the scar above her rib cage. The one he had left her.

She gasps into his mouth, and she feels Kai's own mouth open and his jaw to unhinge in pleasure against hers, his upper lip slightly quirking in a knowing half smile as they breathe hot air into each other.

The pain he's eliciting from her here is different than before. It's outrageous and excruciatingly inappropriate and vile, but it also makes her body _tremble_ with pleasure. The kind of pleasure that makes chills rake up and down her spine and her eyes to roll completely into the back of her head. She comes again. But her cunt is so sensitive and swollen that her orgasm hurts this time.

He's not even kind enough to wait for her cries to die down or her chest to stop heaving as he continues to plunge his cock into her, now using slow and sloppily _wet _and deep strides in and out of her swollen and dripping snatch.

"I-I can't take any more," she whimpers, already feeling the beginnings of another orgasm that she knows will be even more painful than the last.

"You will," he hisses into her ear.

He continues to fuck her to completion until she's raw and sobbing, like her own personal hell monster.

And she hates every second of it.

But despite herself, she already can feel herself getting addicted.

.

.

They spend the next day apart.

She had made it very clear the first time that she was no longer interested in living with him. Which he gets. He did almost kill her, after all.

She could barely even look at him once he had finished fucking the absolute daylights out of her. And from the sound of her heart rate that he could hear through the thin walls of his own guest room, she had passed out shortly after.

Being with Bonnie was like everything and everything he had ever imagined. She was _perfect _for him in every single way, and they hadn't even gotten to the good part yet. He had so many more _fucked _up fantasies that he wanted to see play out with her.

_In time, _he reminds himself. And this time, he knows it isn't wishful thinking. He could see it on her face while he fucked into her, those half-lidded eyes and from her screams, that no matter how terrified she was, she still craved it just as much as he did. And now that he knew that she was willing to take it, there was no going back. They've crossed a threshold. And he wasn't going to let her go back.

So he doesn't say goodbye to her. He's come to his own conclusion that this entire situation may seem as though she is playing him for a fool, but he knows better. She _does _care about him. She can't fake the amount of times she came for him, nor can she fake everything that happened _before _he went crazy and chomped on her neck.

She can't fake the way she looks at him, just like he can't fake it.

At least, that's what he keeps telling himself. He may be in denial, but he is well _past_ the point of caring about that.

Especially when Bonnie is back in his life once more.

And so, the minute he leaves the boarding house with a half-assed and inappropriately casual apology to the rest of the scooby gang (much to Damon's delight) he gathers all the parts he needs.

All it takes is a brief pit stop on the way to the hotel at one of Virginia's many fine witch establishments to get everything.

His fingers fuddle with the effort of clasping the metal pieces into one, he pulls out a screwdriver in order to twist in a tiny screw into the device. His fingers force the pieces together, heavily determined. Because despite having her back, he feels it this time.

He's sunk deep. Deeper than rock bottom.

_It's just in case_, he thinks.

Because his original plan, the one that had relied on the Bennett-witch made daylight ring currently sitting untouched in his mother's marital box, has been officially put on the backburner. Things have changed. Because now, he truly knows what it's like to lose Bonnie Bennett.

It will not happen again.

He holds the metal device upwards, the moonlight shining through his window illuminates the shiny metallic pieces in its intricate design.

It's perfect. His craftsmanship was truly something to be admired, but he had had 20 years in isolation to learn skills such as these. Normally he'd need a Bennett witch to pull off the type of spell and magic for this type of contraption. But this time, he's accounted for that. He knows the type of spell his own father had used earlier did not totally rely on a Bennett witch, the bastard had figured it out all with a bit of Gemini magic and even more importantly, no celestial event.

And now, so had he.

His phone buzzes in his pocket, and this time, he doesn't hesitate to pick up.

"Kai?"

It's her voice, smooth and naked, slightly crackling over the static. He remembers what that same voice had sounded like screaming his name just a few hours ago. How nearly _unbearable _it had felt to have to leave her again. And he knows from the shifted energy of her magic that had been calling after him as he left, that she had felt the same way. At least subconsciously that is.

He knew she missed him.

And if she's calling him for what he _thinks_ she's calling him to say...

"Yes?" He clears his throat.

"I-I wanna stay with you again."

_Bingo. _

She sounds so, so vulnerable and the raw admittance of her wanting to be with him again makes his cock twitch in his pants.

Sure, she's already succeeded in ruining him, but that doesn't mean that he can't still do the same to her.

Her being in his general vicinity will make it that much easier.

Especially because he doesn't plan on being apart from her ever again.

"Perfect."

He grins ear to ear as the line hangs up.

It was all falling into place again.


End file.
